What is financial redress?
Financial redress means getting money back, or getting work put right, when a business took your payment and didn't deliver what it promised.
The basics
Why a valid claim still goes nowhere
Most consumer disputes don’t fail because the consumer is wrong. They fail because pursuing one is a second job: the business stops answering, and the amount is too large to shrug off and too small for a law firm to take on contingency.
Redress reverses that. Assemble the evidence properly, put the claim in front of somebody at the business who can actually decide it, and escalate until resolving it costs less than continuing to ignore it.
The remedies
What you can actually ask for
Redress is not one thing. What is open to you depends on what went wrong, what you signed, and how you paid.
Your money back
The payment reversed, in part or in full.
The work put right
The business returns and finishes or repairs what it did.
Replacement
New materials or a new unit, where a repair will not hold.
The contract unwound
The agreement cancelled and both sides put back where they started.
A payout from a bond
Bonded trades post money before they can work, and it is there to pay consumers.
Statutory damages
Some states add an amount on top of your loss, set by the statute rather than by your invoice.
Which of these are open to you is a question about your state and your contract. Your state’s page sets out the limits and the statute where you are.
The basis
Where the right comes from
A claim is not a complaint. It rests on something, and there is usually more than one thing to rest it on.
The contract
A quote, a scope of work, a warranty, a text agreeing a date. Anything that records what was promised.
Your state’s consumer protection statute
Every state has one. They cover deception and unfair practices, and several make the business pay your costs when you win.
Licensing and bonding
A trade that needs a license answers to the board that issued it. A bond is money set aside in advance to pay consumers.
How you paid
Card networks and consumer financing law run their own rules on their own schedule, whatever the business agreed to.
The clock
Every route has a clock, and they do not run together
The deadline most people know about is the one for going to court, and it is the last to close rather than the first.
The routes that ask least of you close soonest. A card dispute runs from the charge. A licensing board runs on its own schedule, and a bond claim on the bond’s. By the time somebody looks up how long they have to sue, the faster routes have often already shut.
There are 10 routes in all, and they close on different schedules. The deadline checker tells you which are still open where you are, and how we work covers what happens after that.
What does hiring an advocate actually get you?
You keep the claim. We take on the work of making it expensive to ignore.
A file, not a complaint
Your contract, payments, photographs and correspondence, assembled so the business has to answer the facts.
Put to a decision maker
In writing, to somebody with the authority to resolve it, with a specific remedy attached.
Escalation that costs them
Where a business won’t engage, formal channels carry real consequences. We use the ones that fit your situation.
You know where it stands
Your portal shows the current stage of your advocacy file, so you never have to chase us for an update.
What a consumer advocate actually is
A consumer advocate works for the consumer, and only for the consumer. That sounds obvious until you look at who else is involved in a dispute.
Plenty of intermediaries can help. None of them is on your side by design, and the reason is always the same one: look at who pays them.
We are, and the cost structure is what makes that credible rather than a slogan. We’re paid by you, not by the business you’re in dispute with, and we take no referral fees from law firms in either direction. There is no arrangement under which we’re better off if your claim quietly goes away.1
What we are not
| Who you are dealing with | Who pays them | So who they answer to |
|---|---|---|
| Satisfy | You do, directly. | You. We take no referral fees in either direction, and no payment from the business you are in dispute with. |
| A warranty administrator | The contractor whose work is in dispute. | The contractor. Useful, and not on your side by design. |
| An industry arbitration scheme | The industry it arbitrates. | Its members, collectively. |
| A review site | Advertisers, including businesses you might be disputing. | Whoever is buying placement. |
Doing it yourself
You can pursue all of this on your own
None of it requires an advocate. The statutes are public, the complaint forms are free, and the letters are ones you can write.
What it asks of you is time and persistence: assembling the file, finding the person who can actually decide, writing again when nobody answers, and keeping track of which routes are still open while you do it.
Our free library has the templates, the state limits and the checklists.
Why there's a cost to get started
Advocacy costs money to do. Assembling a file, drafting correspondence, filing complaints, and chasing a business that doesn’t want to be chased is real work with real hours behind it, and it happens before anyone knows whether there will be a recovery.
The engagement cost covers the work of getting started. It applies only once we’ve agreed to take your advocacy file on. Asking us a question costs nothing, and neither does finding out where you stand.2
It's the only cost, whatever happens next
The alternative model, charging nothing up front, sounds better and works worse: it forces a service to take only the cases that are close to certain, which means the disputes that most need advocacy are exactly the ones that get turned away.
Disclosures
- 1.Satisfy is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. We neither pay for nor accept referral fees.
- 2.Engagement costs vary by state, by the kind of work involved, and by the value of the advocacy file, so there is no single figure. The exact amount for your situation is disclosed in your portal and in the consumer service agreement, after we review your advocacy file and before you sign or pay anything.
- 3.The engagement cost is subject to that agreement and to any applicable state limits on fees charged by non-attorney representatives. It is not refundable, because it covers work already done.