Pablo Rabanal (48) defines himself as a kind of profit-oriented Robin Hood. It occurred to this particular vigilante to launch reclamador.es, a portal that he created in 2012 to make Justice accessible through the Internet and to which consumers go to complain mainly to airlines, banks, city councils… The idea struck him. It arose from a personal anger with a telephone company and an intolerance of being teased. “An operator did a job on me, left me without a phone for 15 days and then continued billing me. I decided to change operators and they wanted to charge me a penalty… The typical thing with telephone companies,” Pablo tells LOC. And he continues: “I was a member of the OCU and there they told me that I was right and that I had to process it. But I had to do everything myself. I searched on Google to see if there was someone who could handle the process for me and I saw that there was not. That’s when I started to pull the thread.”
An economist by training, Pablo also worked in the world of cinema and even considered becoming an actor. He also went through investment banking and with all that experience decided to start “something of his own.” The CEO of reclamador.es believes that the future of the consumption of legal consultations will be online and that this trend is already seen, that is, that traditional lawyers would be less in demand. “Here you can register from your home, without going anywhere. We only charge for success, when we win. We keep the client constantly updated and you have an area where you can check how your case is evolving. I believe that we are more competitive, agile and transparent than a traditional lawyer. For example, in the case of airlines we tell you: ‘Enter your flight details here and we’ll see what happened.'” During the summer and holidays, he has a peak of requests that have to do precisely with the airlines: flight delays, cancellations, etc.
Their modus operandi is, therefore, to charge the client when the case has been won. “If we win, we apply a percentage on the money we recover that ranges between 10% and 25% depending on the type of claim.” Currently, his team consists of 80 people. They have won 130,000 cases and have claimed 220 million euros, but at first Pablo was told that it would be very difficult to generate income with his business model. “Many lawyers told me that the collar was going to cost me more than the dog. With one case it won’t pay off but with many it will because in the end the technology and processes are replicable.”
One of the achievements of which he is most proud is the processing of the expenses of formalizing the mortgages (registration, appraisal and management). Initially they were charged to the client but now it is the banks that have to pay them. “If you signed a mortgage before 2019 you can claim them. We included it in 4,000 lawsuits, a judge from Ceuta accepted it and that case ended up overturning the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and opening the door to more than 8 million consumers to be able to claim that. Three years We hope, yes.”
But not everything is rosy. This year is particularly bad due to the strikes that have occurred in the Justice sector, which is affecting 40% of its turnover. “This year we had planned to grow a lot but the strikes are stopping us. We have blocked in courts only in our fees about 27 million euros. In addition, in the cases won from capital gains in town councils there are some who refuse to pay them or who they delay by system”.
Despite this, Pablo’s idea is to continue growing and handle more and more cases. For example, improper inclusion in the list of defaulters. His project is so ambitious that in his 11 years of experience he has attracted the attention of large investors. “We have a very powerful list. For example Cabiedes, a reference for Europa Press and the startup world. On the other hand there is Faraday, François Derbaix who is the founder of TopRural or Latin American entrepreneurs like Leandro Sigman.”
The Arbeloa brothers have also trusted him, one of them the former Real Madrid player and… the founder of Jazztel, Martín Varsavsky, the telephone company for which Pablo began to complain. The circle is closed.
