• An Australian company called Unfair Dismissals Direct has been using Google advertising to target recently sacked employees, promising to represent them in unfair dismissal claims on a ‘no win no fee’ basis.
• But interviews with former clients, employees and review of public and obtained documents reveals a pattern of repeated, basic mistakes from the company’s employees during appearances, efforts to maximise money for the company at the cost of their clients, and a reluctance or refusal to pay settlement money.
• Last week, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) published a rare public alert about the company, alleging that 18 consumers had complained that the company owes them settlements of up to $7,000.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Adam Jones was fired from his job the week before Christmas in 2018. And, if you ask him, it wasn’t fair.

Jones had moved to Melbourne for the role and he didn’t know anyone who could help him lodge an unfair dismissal claim.

So, Jones Googled for help, which led him to the website for a company called Unfair Dismissals Direct (UDD).

The company’s website promised “competent representation” for people who believe that they had been unfairly dismissed on a ‘no win no fee’ basis.

It’s one of many companies which follow a similar business model.

But what separates UDD is its use of internet advertising to attract vulnerable people, its agents’ basic and repeated errors while representing clients, and allegations that the company would delay or even refuse to transfer settlements won on behalf of the client.

On December 4, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued a public warning notice — the first in three years from the consumer watchdog — concerning the company.

“The ACCC has reasonable grounds to suspect that Unfair Dismissals Direct may have engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct, and made false or misleading representations,” a ACCC December 7 statement read.

The company’s website is no longer available and none of its phone numbers work anymore.

What’s left behind is dozens of people who believe they were taken advantage of during their lowest moments.

Interviews with former clients and ex-employees — many of whom are not named by Business Insider Australia due to non-disclosure agreements or fears of legal action — reveals a pattern of behaviour from the company: an operation that targeted the most vulnerable clients, pushes them to settle for smaller amounts, and delaying or failing to pay out their settlements.

Registered in 2016 under the name Dismissals Direct Pty Ltd, UDD employees represent their clients in mediation and at tribunals like the Fair Work Commission (FWC).

But they’re not acting as lawyers. Instead, they’re acting as what’s known as industrial agents or paid agents.

There’s no required training or regulation for those acting in this capacity. And UDD makes it clear that they are not offering legal advice.

Jones remembers he spotted UDD at the top of his search results.

“They’re a paid ad and they rank highly on Google search, so I went to them,” he said.

According to a former employee — who Business Insider Australia has chosen not to name due to a non-disclosure agreement they signed before leaving — Google advertising was one of the firm’s biggest expenses.

While they were operating, someone researching Google in Australia for terms like “fair work commission” or “unfair dismissal” would show an advertisement for UDD (and other similar firms) before the FWC’s website or any resources about employment law.

Jones decided to go with them. He did an initial consultation, paid an administrative fee of “about $100”, passed over a payslip and then waited.

It wasn’t until February — just two days before his hearing at the FWC— that he heard from a UDD employee.

“They rang and told me ‘we should be able to get 4-5 weeks compensation’, and that would only work out to be about their fee, after tax,” he said.

Jones told them he wanted more and the UDD agent agreed to push for more.

But during the mediation, Jones claims they settled for a month’s pay after the UDD agent pushed for it anyway.

“It was around $10,000 that was awarded. After tax, that was about $6,000 which was mostly taken up by their fee. They said they were going to give me $1,000. I told them it wasn’t fair,” he said.

He said it took the next four months to get any money out of UDD. As part of their standard contract, their client’s former employers are instructed to transfer any settlement money directly to UDD.

Jones said he emailed and phoned constantly, before eventually taking them to the small claims tribunal.

He won — and was awarded the $1,000. As he walked out of court, he started to experience heart palpitations.

“It put me in hospital, it gave me heart problems. The stress of it is just ridiculous. You’re in a bad way as it was. And you go with this company because it says on their website ‘they’ll fight for the best outcome for you’,” he said.

Around this time, Jones began to notice other people were in a similar situation to him. He started up a Facebook page about the company, and he was amazed by the response.

“I had 12 people contact me to say they’d had a bad experience. And that was just in the first four weeks,” he said.

Frustrated clients congregated in other online spaces. The company’s profiles on business review websites like Trustpilot and Glasshouse have been bombarded with people recounting similar experiences.

Jones received a cease-and-desist letter about the Facebook Page from a law firm that shares a director with UDD.

Others told Business Insider Australia they had also been threatened with legal action for writing scathing online reviews about the service.

A history of mistakes and a lack of attention to detail

A common factor between former client’s accounts is UDD agent’s lack of expertise or attention to detail during mediation.

Like Jones, other clients said that their representatives would only contact them shortly before their appearances and, during those appearances, seemed to lack familiarity with their cases.

While much of the company’s dealings are part of private mediations, numerous published legal decisions also show repeated representative errors by the firm.

Some show a misunderstanding of the law. In a 2019 FWC decision, a UDD agent filed an unfair dismissal application in the wrong jurisdiction.

In 2018, a client’s agent instructed them to file an incorrect application. That client was unable to contact the agent when they found out via email their conciliation conference was cancelled.

Other errors suggest a disorganisation or lack of concern for their clients. One client was granted an extension after their UDD agent failed to file paperwork because they’d left the office before the paperwork was sent to them at 2.06PM.

A failure of UDD to pay a filing fee on behalf of their client led the West Australia Industrial Relations Commissioner’s Chief Commissioner P E Scott to not only reprimand the firm, but also to express concern about the regulation around industrial agents (who in WA are able to register and have a code of conduct but receive no oversight).

“Those who need this service are often not qualified to judge the standard of service they are getting. The legislation provides those people with no real protection,” he wrote in his decision.

“They are free to charge fees yet are not accountable. They may be incompetent, unethical or not apply appropriate diligence and yet they may hang out their shingle.”

Another issue was that UDD’s marketing and branding was fooling people into believing they were dealing with the FWC directly.

Multiple published decisions show that consumers believed this was the case.

A 2019 decision overturned a refusal for an extension of time for a cognitively impaired individual who believed he was dealing with the FWC after contacting UDD through the email address ‘[email protected]’.

“This confusion is only exacerbated when private providers such as Unfair Dismissals Direct appear to be seeking to harvest work by utilising the term “Fair Work” on websites and the like,” the judgement reads.

“To the extent that such practices cause confusion or have the potential to cause confusion, we express our concern. Such practices are, in our view, to be avoided.”

A review of historical web domain records reveals that domains like fairworkaustralia.com.au, fairworkaus.com.au and fairworkaus.com were registered under the company’s trading name.

A spokesperson for the FWC said the Commission has raised “some concerns with UDD about certain aspects of its practices” and said they had been liaising with the ACCC, but declined to comment further.

Mr Chapman also made this mistake. After losing his job, he turned to Google for help and ended up on the UDD website.

“I was on my mobile, going off what was displayed on my screen, I thought they were the Fair Work Commission,” he said.

Like many others others, his representative lodged an application on his behalf, before largely ignoring him up until his conciliation meeting.

Chapman claims that his agent didn’t read a brief he prepared about his case, and pressured him to take a settlement offered by his former employer during mediation which he wasn’t happy with.

“She told me there was no other option, otherwise they would pursue me for this amount of money. The fact that she was holding herself as a lawyer, and with the tone of voice she used, I had zero options. So I accepted,” he said.

When he received paperwork for the settlement, the contract said the employer didn’t accept any fault — something that Chapman said he told his agent that he didn’t want to do — so he refused to sign it.

Since then, Chapman has pursued different legal avenues to try and get justice, including placing a Freedom of Information request into the ACCC to see their dealings with the company.

Last week, the ACCC for the first time alleged that 18 consumers had not received their settlement of up to $7,000 from UDD.

“We are very concerned that it appears some clients of Unfair Dismissals Direct, who were at a low point in their lives after losing their job were not paid the settlement balance owing to them,” ACCC Commissioner Sarah Court said in a statement.

Multiple former clients — who Business Insider Australia has agreed to keep anonymous due to their fear of possible litigation — say they’ve never received a penny from settlement months and years after the fact.

A UDD contact obtained by Business Insider Australia outlining the terms of settlement prepared by shows that the former employers were expected to pay the settlement in 7 days after signing the document.

“Unfair Dismissals Direct shall deduct its Professional Fee, and shall remit the balance […] generally within five (5) business days of the date of invoice,” it reads.

The contract also stipulates that the terms of the settlement are confidential, and that neither the former employee or employer will disparage each other.

UDD Terms of Settlement Redacted by Cameron Wilson on Scribd

Another UDD client told Business Insider Australia that she had a similar experience as with other disgruntled customers: her first time talking to her representative was two hours before mediation, her agent settled for an amount that would only barely cover their fee and they failed to secure a letter of letter of recommendation as instructed.

When she wanted to seek legal advice about the outcome, she realised that the contract precluded her from doing so, despite UDD explicitly saying they are not lawyers.

“They make you sign, they also say they’re not providing you legal information. But when I wanted to go speak to lawyer, I couldn’t because because I’ve just signed a contract,” they said.

A dysfunctional company

According to one former employee, the company’s repeated mistakes in court, low or non-existent payouts and reluctance to transfer settlements is not due to malfeasance.

They told Business Insider Australia that internal dysfunction and a lack of resources was the cause of many of the company’s problems.

They claim that the company’s performance became worse over time as they went from hiring university law graduates to people without knowledge of industrial relations law as they found it more difficult to fill roles.

The former employee said that it was “common” to walk away with 10% of their gross settlement amount, but said that was due to tax on a payout combined with high professional fees outlined in the contract.

“The way the contract was drafted, it gave the company a lot of discretion for how much and when to pay. Sometimes [UDD] would take less and frame it as a discount. But the company gave itself the power,” they said.

UDD Contract Redacted by Cameron Wilson on Scribd

They also claim that only the company’s directors could authorise payouts and these authorisations became increasingly rare.

“I think it became apparent as time went on, the disorganisation was either intentional or never going to be fixed. At the end of the day, those paying didn’t have any recourse,” the former employee said.

Another former employee told Business Insider Australia they were instructed to focus on settling for enough to cover their costs.

“People would say the amounts of compensation that they desire and [they] would tell us that we have [to] settle for an amount at least equal to the fee that he is supposed to get. The money would be paid by the employer into the UDD bank account, and from there it was supposed to be paid to the employee after [they] deducted the fee,” they said.

“It seems the money never gets paid to the employee.”

The same employee said they became uncomfortable after they were instructed to lie about their location. They were working from South Africa, but they claim they were told to tell people — including FWC officials — that they were in Australia.

“Lying to a Fair Work Commissioner is like lying to a magistrate or judge in South Africa, and according to me that is unethical. Settling matters according to his instructions and not the clients’ to me is unethical,” they said.

Unfair Dismissal’s online presence went dark sometime in the last year. The last time the Internet Archive saved their website was September 2019.

But there is evidence suggesting the company is still operating under a different name.

Employeeclaims.com.au was registered on November 17 last year. The company’s website said the firm has challenged more than 800 dismissal claims to date.

The domain was registered by Lawnmarkets Investments Pty Ltd, according to public WHOIS records.

While there is no evidence to suggest the new company has engaged in the same tactics as UDD, according to documents from the Australia Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC)’s company database, ‘Employee Dismissal Claims’ shares a company director and office address with UDD.

And the company is still running ads on Google, placing the website at the top of search results right now.

A representative for UDD did not respond to inquiries sent via email and LinkedIn.

Adam Jones is still running his Facebook page warning people about the company. He still regularly hears from new people who are stumbling across his page looking for answers.

The former clients who have been following UDD say they have given up hope of receiving any payment in the future.

But it’s something else that’s motivating Jones to keep following the company.

“I’m not after any money anymore. I’ve been through the shit. I just want to help,” he said.

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