M1 Legal offers help to distressed former Club La Costa employees after confrontation at padel game

Forgiving young mum accosted by desperate former Club La Costa (CLC) worker overcomes fear, and finds way to help not only her assailant but other staff abandoned by the ailing timeshare company

Accosted

New mother 'Mrs X' (name withheld at own request) an admin assistant for leading timeshare claims lawyers M1 Legal was playing padel tennis when a stranger interrupted her game. The woman marched onto the court and began shouting abuse and posturing aggressively towards Mrs X.

"I was shocked and frightened," Mrs X admits. "I had not been out of the house much since my baby was born several months ago. I signed up for this padel group and it was the first time I had met the other people playing.

"The woman asked if I was (Mrs X). She was hostile and angry but anyway I said yes. The woman (I will call her Ms B) told me she knew I worked for M1 Legal. She yelled that I was responsible for 3 thousand families having no food and living on the street.

Club La Costa

"Her shrieking made no sense until I understood she worked for Club La Costa. She had seen my picture on the M1 website and she was shouting about the 353 (not 3 thousand) workers that CLC have laid off. Ms B and the rest of the CLC workforce had been told that their misfortunes were all because of M1 Legal.

"In this moment I was scared and humiliated. The other women were watching and I didn't know what to do. Ms B's body language was agitated, like she might physically attack me. She was between me and the door. I abandoned my game and fled by the other exit while she shouted swear words after me. My husband was waiting with our child in the cafe and I was in floods of tears when I reached him.

Empathy

"Initially I was angry about the attack but I investigated to see what had made this woman so desperate. I am a junior person at M1, so I don't make policy decisions, still I wanted to know if my company had done something to harm those CLC workers.

"For many years, CLC had been disregarding consumer law and issuing illegal timeshare contracts to their customers. They had not been giving legally required information or they sold memberships over the maximum of 50 years.

"These were laws to protect consumers after the awful behaviour of timeshare companies in the past. CLC ignored the rules because they made more money by doing so at the expense of customers

Blame

"I can never feel guilty for my employers helping people suffering from what CLC has done," says Mrs X. "Those customers' rights were ignored, and they deserve to be compensated for CLC's greed. But also workers like Ms B are not to blame for the poor choices their company has made.

"If her bosses are telling staff that their problems are because of M1 instead of CLC's lawless behaviour, then I can understand her frustration with us, despite the information being incorrect."

Helping hand

Further investigation revealed that it wasn't just customers who were unhappy with CLC. "I found an article in El Confidencial about CLC companies being liquidated. The comments underneath were from people saying that laid off employees were not getting payments and were in a terrible financial situation.

"That's when I decided to see if my bosses would do anything to help. The people that should be punished are those who benefited from the illegal actions, not the low paid workers at the bottom of the company."

M1 Legal teams up with ECC

Mrs X reached out to her bosses at M1 Legal, who in turn connected with Andrew Cooper, CEO of European Consumer Claims (ECC), the claims firm working with M1 Legal.

An agreement was reached between ECC and M1 Legal to provide legal assistance to suffering CLC workers seeking to claim their legal rights from the struggling former timeshare giant

"I was so happy my company agreed to help," says Mrs X. "Those workers are as much victims of CLC as the customers were."

"Mrs X is an incredible and empathetic young woman," says Cooper. "After a public attack like that, many people would not feel like offering the hand of friendship, but Mrs X made a passionate case for us to support those workers who feel abandoned by CLC.

"We would therefore like to invite any former Club La Costa staff who have been made redundant and believe that they are owed money from CLC to contact us. We have agreed, if possible, to help M1 Legal provide resources to help you claim any payments you are owed.

"We may even have limited employment positions available for people with the right skillsets"

If you are a former CLC worker needing help with a legal challenge to obtain payments, please email pr@m1legal.com (subject: Employment rights claim CLC)

If you are a former CLC worker seeking employment, please email your CV to sharon@ecc-eu.com (subject: Seeking Employment). In the email body, please detail your main abilities.