A lot has happened in 2024.
The Ukraine war rumbled on, with North Korea alarmingly throwing its hat into the ring in November and Biden giving the go ahead for long range missile strikes deep within Russia. Israel and Hamas continued to exchange violence with no easily visible end in sight. The Syrian Assad regime finally fell in December, with the rest of the world currently watching to see where the dust settles for the Middle East and wider world.
The seemingly endless US election cycle continued to astound, with Donald Trump being indicted, convicted, shot, and finally winning by a landslide giving US Conservatives control of all three governmental branches. In the UK Sir Keir Starmer got off to a shaky start following a decisive national rejection of the Tory party.
Coldest and hottest temperatures were recorded worldwide, and a succession of hurricanes terrorised the US mid Atlantic and eastern seaboards.
We said our final goodbyes to such notables as Geoff Capes, Liam Payne, James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader), David Soul, Carl Weathers, Lou Gosset Junior, Richard Simmonds and the notorious OJ Simpson.
Chubby Warrington teenager Luke Littler won the nation's hearts by reaching the world darts championship final at the tender age of 16, sadly missing out on the top prize to the more established Luke (Humphries).
New shoots miraculously began to sprout from the famous Sycamore Gap tree, six months after the iconic, 150 year old Hadrian's Wall landmark near Crag Lough was felled by senseless vandals, giving hope that the tree may yet be resurrected. Ageing Manchester rockers Oasis announced their reform after a thirty year absence, sparking rumours of financial difficulties forcing the warring brothers to reunite.
Britain's mighty Olympians hauled 65 medals home, with 14 golds, 22 silvers and 29 bronze
2024 is the eighth year in business for European Consumer Claims, making us one of the longest serving and most successful claims firms in Europe.
By the the time the bells ring out the final moments of 2024, we are on track to have helped more than 326 desperate holiday ownership victims to escape their unwanted contracts. We are forecast to have won financial compensation worth more than £2,400,000 for over 110 clients.
Although our focus has been traditionally on holiday ownership consumer claims, we have always been a more general claims firm. Together with our associated legal partners M1 Legal, M1 Law and Pinder Reaux we fight consumer abuse wherever we find it.
In October of 2024 we launched a large scale campaign to take on the shocking consumer abuses in the the holiday park and static homes market.
An estimated 465,000 people in the UK own either static homes or holiday park caravans, which is a similar number to the amount of British timeshare owners. Many of the holiday park sales agents actually came from a timeshare background.
ECC aims to hold these bad actors to account the same way that they have in the holiday ownership industry during the last eight years.
2024 has seen no shortage of positive, local, national and international media coverage. The Daily Mirror covered our work, as did The Sun, Metro, Wales Online and Stoke on Trent Live.
The Henley Herald chronicled our success yet again, and an eight episode podcast on Valencia Life about our work was downloaded thousands of times.
I echo our previous CEO's thoughts from last year. Journalists are becoming more fearless about speaking truth to power. They are beginning to challenge rich and influential companies in a way that they haven´t, historically, always had the courage to do.
We look forward to more such coverage as we battle not only against consumer abuse on a broader scale, starting with holiday parks and static homes, but anywhere we find injustice and service providers who are at fault.
A new regional office was needed to cope with the surge in US business and the super-regional Galleria Mall in Fort Lauderdale Florida was selected. Florida has the world's highest density of holiday ownership members due to the concentration of theme parks such as Disney and Universal Studios.
A vast amount of vacationers have been signed up to holiday ownerships in Florida, and a significant amount of those people now regret their purchase. It made sense for us to have a physical presence in this location
Stateside we are known as American Consumer Claims (ACC).
25 dedicated professionals are currently manning the ACC desks stateside and looking after our US clients.
Man is due to return to the moon this year for the first time in over half a centaury. Only a fly-past is planned for this mission, with Artemis 2 ferrying a crew of four astronauts around the far side of our celestial neighbour.
The next mission, Artemis 3, is due to touch down on the lunar surface South Pole and imprint more powdery, grey, outsized bootprints in history one year later.
2025 is FIFA Club World Cup year. Not the trophy contested by nations, but the championship vied for by individual clubs. Manchester City will be hoping to defend their title in June over in the United States.
Will Donald J Trump's second term in office bring apocalyptic disaster and tyranny? Or just lower taxes and a more stable geopolitical environment...? We will have to wait and see.
On a personal level no doubt we will all undergo changes, and live through events which are momentous, though only to ourselves. And no less important for that.
ECC will continue marshalling its resources in defence of the legions of holiday park and static home sales victims, both in the UK and further afield. Expect the shady operators this industry to be shaken up as drastically as rogue companies in the timeshare business.
Despite all the well documented success of ECC to date, we really are just getting started. In the words of Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman: "you aint seen nothing yet..."
I will leave you with a 1900 year old quote from Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. It is a mindset I strive to personally live by, and is a large part of the spirit that allowed European Consumer Claims to consistently pioneer new ways to bring elusive holiday ownership companies to justice when all the 'experts' said it couldn't be done.
"If you wish to improve, be content to be thought both foolish and stupid"
In the coming year, may we all have the courage to try new things, and never be daunted by the fear of failure.
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