Accident Claims: Effective Work Ethics With Claims Experts
Claims management companies and personal injury lawyers promise you that they will handle all the work your claim requires, but still, they need input from you to ensure the success of your accident claim. Better work ethics with claims experts will help you increase your chances of earning complete compensation. Here are a few things you should remember.
1. Meet Personally Regularly
It is important that you meet personally with your claims expert on a regular basis and the best way to do this is to choose a claims company that is near your location. Claims experts need to brief you on the progress of your claim, how well your claim is doing and what further improvements do you need for your clam.
2. Provide All Details
Your claims expert is not a mind reader; they will need all information and details about your claim. But, before you do so, ensure that the Ministry of Justice regulates them. You can validate this by asking for their Claims Regulation number, the number you could use if you have any complaints about your CMC. The claim’s logical inclination is based on the details you provide, so mind these items as soon as possible.
3. Patience
Any professional knows the value of time but sometimes, they will also need time to make your claim progress faster. Sometimes, it could take time for a claims expert to achieve progress on your claim. Insurance companies and the new Ministry of Justice accident claim guidelines are not making it easier for anybody, even to your claims expert.
PPI Claims Insights: How Much Did Banks Actually Earn A Decade Ago
The consumer group Which? claimed that UK banks mis sold PPI on almost every loan, mortgage or credit card for a decade. The Financial Services Authority verified this as their investigation showed that banks mis sold 3.2 million UK citizens a PPI policy that they cannot use. The average payout for a PPI is £4000 but only with a good PPI template letter and specialist help. It is a bit intriguing to see that the total compensation amount for PPI is around £14 billion. How much money did the banks really make from mis selling PPI?
According to past employees of two of UK’s big banks Lloyds and Barclays, PPI became the main source of income for many banks during the “insurance boom”. While some personnel saw what was happening and had it reported to top officials, the top officials refused to acknowledge the alerts, indicating that banks were actually conscious in making the mis selling.
Financial analysts estimate that the top four UK banks made at least £1 billion yearly for mis selling PPI. It was one of the main income sources of the banks. Compound interests and multiple PPI ownership granted banks greater profits through the mis sold insurances.
However, banks refused to acknowledge the immensity of their PPI mis selling in the last decade and their total of £14 billion shocked the entire country, including the Financial Services Authority. But according to experts, the surprises do not stop there; the total PPI compensation can reach up to £25 billion by the end of 2014 alone.
Recording Effective Instrument Tracks: Real Vs. Virtual Instruments
Today’s technology allows for mobile Internet devices and also convenient, portable recording equipment that allows musicians to record music anywhere with a computer. The best part of this is that users can use a keyboard to emulate real instruments using virtual instruments. Is it not great to have your own orchestra or choir controlled by a piano/ MIDI keyboard?
But many musicians complain about virtual instruments because they lack the “soul” a real instrument has. Some do not recognize the difference and greatly praise its convenience. If you’re planning to record your album soon, it is important that you consider the two options of recording your instruments using a microphone or a virtual instrument.
Microphone recording is the most basic recording method for all instruments. However, users will need to know how to strategically place microphones throughout a guitar or bass amplifier for example as different microphone positions have different sound phases that can do good or bad for most songs and mixes. You will also need a professional-grade mixer to balance the sound of the microphones to give a good recording sound.
One advantage of microphone recording is that the sound is real and natural. Virtual instruments have their own inconsistencies and can only have one to several imaginable sounds. With different microphone combinations and positions, the sound of a real instrument can be different with each track you hear.
However, virtual instruments can sound as real as can be and is convenient. They are also less expensive than buying multiple microphones and mixers. Virtual instruments are also programmable and less harder to manipulate. Some complain about their thinness, but some also attribute it to their natural quality for recording.
PPI Claims: The First Few Steps
To reclaim all your refunds, the first thing you need to do is to make a claim. You may be competing with 3.2 million customers making a claim for mis sold PPI payments, but it does not mean your chances of getting complete refunds are zero. Here are the first few things you need to know when you make a claim for payment protection insurance.
1. Receipts
Your receipts are your preliminary evidence that you bought the insurance policy and the reference point of the estimated refunds you could get. Receipts also reflect the compound interest rates you repaid as you go through the years paying for the mis sold insurance. Don’t lose your receipts, always keep them and have a soft copy of them.
2. Evidence of Mis Selling
You are mis sold PPI if you purchased the insurance having any kind of sickness, already unemployed or self-employed, or beyond the claiming age. Documents to help prove these details are medical certificates or check-ups dated at least six months before the date of your first receipt, your birth certificate or your business permit or last employment contract.
3. Processing
Submit your PPI claims form along with copies of evidences that you are mis sold the insurance policy in a letter of claiming to the bank. If the bank rejects your claim, the Financial Ombudsman can help you in seeing if the banks are correct in rejecting your claim. This is highly unlikely, the FOS itself claims that bank-rejected claims are actually valid 7 out of 10 of the time.
For more information or to begin your claim go to PPIReclaimCo.co.uk.
Audio Headrooms: Getting All Your Tracks Heard
One problem beginning audio recorders have is the ability to mix their audio properly. While it certainly takes time, it is not as difficult to learn as some propose it to be. Experienced audio engineers work through measurement. But for example, if you’re a person who just wants to hear your track with full clarity, you need to know about audio headrooms.
A “headroom” in audio can be heard by doing the following example. Take all your drum files and pre-master them before you export them into a single stereo file. Load this into a new project and record your guitars over it. You will find that your guitar has more headroom than the drumset, yet the drumset can be heard with properly loudness. This is called an audio “headroom”. If you try the same but without pre-mastering your drumsets, you lose the guitar headroom and the guitar frequencies are entwined with the individual drum instruments.
The knowledge of audio headrooms is effective especially if you’re to mix loud music, or music with more than 5 tracks. High gain guitars in modern rock and metal songs aren’t really high gain; they are layered over each other four times. Two stereo guitar tracks are mixed with the stereo file of the drum and bass, and the mixed file is then combined with another set of stereo guitar tracks for the high gain sound.
An orchestral arrangement can also find audio headrooming effective. Based on the principle of early opera houses, the positions of instruments is what the headroom exhibits. In an Orchestra, the bass is usually located at the far end of the room, the widest area of the spectrum. Strings and violins are usually spread out and in front. If you imagine this as audio files, basses and percussions are the first to give headroom to violins and wind instruments, then if any vocals, then they are given more headroom than the instruments.
Audio Compression For Internet Broadcasting
If you’ve successfully set up your Internet radio servers and are streaming music throughout the Internet, you might notice that sometimes the streaming sounds lacking, is a bit low on volume with changing tracks and sometimes sounding “lifeless”. Conventional radio broadcasting makes use of compression to ensure that the sound delivered to radios have enough “life” and are normalized in volume.
When applying compression to the music in your radio playlist, consider the quality of each track you’re about to play, or the track you’re about to play. It might be too loud or too soft. Conventional radio stations make use of at least 2:1 ratio of compression and slow attack and release to highlight the more silent parts and attenuate the louder parts.
Then ensure that no music in your playlist clips with your settings. Using all the audio and material you have on hand, survey each song for at least one minute on the loudest part of the track to ensure that there is no clipping.
You could apply the compression while the music is playing or you could play your audio through a DAW streamed through your Internet broadcasting channel. As different songs have different dynamics, you could adjust the compression to your taste and sound.
PPI Claims: What You Need to Know Before Claiming
Before you make a claim for PPI it is important to know what you are up against as soon as you file your claim to your bank, the Financial Ombudsman or with claims management companies. Payment protection insurance claims may have become seemingly easier today with banks now providing a compensation payout and the FOS increasing their manpower, but there are things to watch out for.
1. Banks Are Not Always Willing
The Financial Ombudsman recently announced figures that banks are still slowing down the claiming process by rejecting even valid claims. Around seven out of 10 claims proceeding from bank rejection into the FOS are valid claims upheld by the organization. This is evidence that banks are not always willing to provide you a chance to make a claim.
2. Banks Can Slow Down and Even Reduce Payout
According to Andy Wigmore, policy director of the Claims Standards Council, there is proof that banks are slowing down and reducing the repayment of customers. This is why the CSC advices that claims management companies are not the reason for the slowdown. Banks are evading their responsibilities and it is the job of CMCs to follow up and ensure that customers get complete compensation.
3. You Can Earn More Than £2750
The general estimate of a mis sold PPI compensation amount is around £2750 but if you have a credit card, mortgage or loan taken out 10 years ago or even more, you could get more than £30,000 due to compound interests and increasing premiums. One example is the case of “Roberta”, a self-employed woman who had PPI in her two credit cards. Each credit card had at least £35,000, earning her £65,000 in total for the mis selling.
Further information and how to make a claim can be found at www.ppireclaimco.org.
Future Stepladders Of Whiplash Claiming
Whiplash is an injury that is incurred usually in a high-impact car accident. While seemingly non-fatal, whiplash injuries can range from the mildest to the most severe. It can cause nausea and disorientation up to spinal damages resulting in partial to full body paralysis.
Making an effective whiplash claim today takes more than just reporting you had the injury during your accident. As it is self-reported, the government and the insurance industry plan to implement more rigorous standards for whiplash claims. In the future, you might need to fulfill the following requirements to ensure your claim’s success.
1. Evidences
Even before, evidences that could point to whiplash injuries have always been a requirement for victims by insurance companies. Evidences, such as video, photographs, police reports and medical certificates have helped many victims to get their whiplash compensation. If you have extensive in-car monitoring such as “SmarBox” technology, you could have a full analysis of your car’s speed before and during the accident and a video showing what exactly happened during your accident.
2. Technicalities
The UK government plans to adopt Germany’s whiplash injury standards into the system. This means that if your or the offender were running at 10km/h during the accident and got whiplash injuries, you can make a valid claim. Germany’s standards also require two medical experts to evaluate your injuries and give their opinion about the validity of the injuries. Further information on how to claim for whiplash in the UK can be found at www.whiplashclaimsco.org.
3. Legal Challenges
Insurance companies are encouraged by banks to challenge questionable claims. This might slow down the processing of your claims. The Small Claims Court has now raised its compensation amount from £1,200 to £5,000 for non-serious whiplash claims. Most claimants have been receiving more compensation for fraudulent cases. The Small Claims Court will now compensate based on decision by jury.
HSBC Incurs Additional Expenses, Still Levels Head With PPI Setbacks
HSBC’s third quarter annual report revealed a shocking £1 billion surprise expense for this year. The bank’s target, which focused on retaining their expenses only to a minimum of 50% of their profit, had actually slashed a great amount from the supposed £1 billion profit they estimated. HSBC now stands at £650 million on profit but no further announcement about adding to their payment protection compensation bill was received as of yet.
Currently, the total PPI bill of UK banks has reached £13 billion as more and more claims are won by the Financial Ombudsman, who processes 1,500 claims on a daily basis. Each claim has a 70% chance of success in the care of the Ombudsman. However, as the number of claims grow, banks become more weary and try to hassle or delay their customer’s claims.
HSBC states that it is working on future projects and is satisfied with their performance. They are still estimating the amount to add to their total PPI compensation bill but they mention that it can be quite insignificant to their total losses. HSBC currently has £1.1 for their compensation bills.
Other banks complain about claims management companies and the Financial Services Authority for bringing in thousands of “bogus” claims from non-existing PPI claimants. However, claims management companies such as PPICo.org state that they check thoroughly each and every claim they receive. The FSA only asked banks to check on their customers who may be mis sold PPI and invite them to make a claim.
Ceeney states that banks are only trying to impart the blame on customers. When people go for claims management companies, they reflect the persistence of customers in getting back all their repayments. Banks should stop “dragging their feet” and finally deal with the situation face to face.
