“I told him I have a right to refund and if you don’t give it to me, I will have to take your company to court and he said ‘I look forward to it’, and I said you are going to regret this”, Herbie Goldberg, 71, recalls his blistering exchange with a young store manager months ago, who did, in fact, regret taking Herbie for just another customer who would go back home, dump the defective item he purchased and forget about it.

Instead, days later, a legal-sounding letter reached his bosses, as if it was drafted by a trained solicitor, threatening them with a complaint at the small claims court if they did not pay him up.

One would assume this supposed refund was probably worth thousands, involving an expensive ‘air fryer’ or some such jazz, but it was far from it. This revenge saga was fought over a faulty 20-pound electric screw driver that Herbie had bought just before the covid lockdowns and could not return for many days. It ended with him getting not just his twenty pounds back, but also an extra sixty to cover the cost of his visits to the store.

That a man was prepared to go to court over a product so mundane would stun many, but to Herbie Goldberg, it was business as usual. This isn’t even his first such ‘small claim’ victory. He has been doing this since 1977.

Now in his 70s, Herbie is an ex- IBM engineer from Wakehams Hill in North London, who is on a mission to teach the unscrupulous corporations and landlords a lesson in consumer rights and humanity. To him, it isn’t about the value of these claims, it is about justice and reclaiming people’s power. He does not like to call himself ‘retired’ as he is now busier than usual fighting the good fight for not just himself but for the people around him. So far, he has voluntarily helped on thirty-five cases, of which he has only lost a few and he is determined to hit atleast a century.

From a claim about bad dentures, to enhanced electricity bill, to a restaurant where the water on the floor resulted in someone slipping and breaking their knee, Herbie’s repertoire of triumphs is varied and a display of corporate arrogance that most people accept as the downside of living in a capitalistic society and do nothing about.

He has sued the likes of Sky and Debenhams over unfair practices and made them compensate his friends.  He has sued a land lord who would not return the deposit, the driver who hit his car on the street one day and refused to reimburse for the damages (it wasn’t insured), and even a neighbour for not paying their promised share of expenses towards community repairs. Such is Herbie’s popularity in his social circle, anyone who is ripped off by a seller knows whom to call.

From being someone who fixed computers for a living years ago, Herbie is now an expert of all-things-consumer-laws, who likes going to courts and watching legal proceedings as one of his past times. He can send summons through the Small Claims Court (that is more like a division under the county courts). He can be your ‘Mckenzie’ friend during the hearing. And he can even call the bailiffs for recovery of the money if it comes to that.

What drives a common man like him to pursue this unusual path of legal rebellion that many would find too daunting? – As Jewish Austrian refugees who had to flee their country to escape the Nazis, Herbie’s parents had to start a new life in Britain from scratch and had lost two relatives in the concentration camps. Herbie had grown up listening to stories of Hitler’s injustice that had personally affected his family and had filled him with contempt for the people in power.

Then, at the age of sixteen, he worked at a solicitor’s office doing odd jobs and got a taste of how big corporates trampled over small people, who could not afford to sue them. But the consumer laws changed in the UK in 1973, making it easier for any person to take their refund claim of below a certain amount to an authority under a “Small Claims Court” even without a solicitor.

The power balance had now begun to shift in the favour of regular people and in 1977, Herbie found an opportunity to try these news laws. A toolkit for a cassette recorder, that he had ordered from an electronics store for a hundred pounds at the time, hadn’t turned out to be up to mark and the company did not respond to him for a long time.

What followed next was not something a corporate had yet witnessed; getting a stern letter from a customer warning to take them to the Small Claims Court if he is not given his due. “They sent me back a cheque for the amount with a letter that said ‘We have never met a more unpleasant person ever, and we are never going to sell you anything again’…it was my first ever win”, Herbie adds joyfully.

His little achievement soon became a talking point in his office and the neighbourhood. He had started a revolution of sorts, without charging a penny, and was suddenly being approached by friends, relatives and friends of relatives to help them get refunds too. The great big consumer awakening was soon upon the country. Claims under thousand pounds were being filed at an increasing rate, that went up to ten thousand pounds in the recent years, giving Herbie a moral boost to keep going.

“There is a famous movie quote ‘You shall not side with the great against the powerless’…I don’t like innocent people being bullied by landlords, by big organisations, especially the ones who cannot fight for themselves…”, Herbie reiterates that the socialist in him derives satisfaction seeing big corporates loose to regular folks.

Ironically, he is also not an anti-capitalist. “Look at all the communist countries…China, North Korea, Cuba, all it leads to is dictatorship. Mindful capitalism is very important for healthy economies and democracies to survive”, Herbie claims. The Labour party to him is a lost cause and he likes to be politically neutral. “I don’t think any of them are fit to run the country”, he continues as he checks the time. He has a concert to attend like every other week.

When he is not busy making strategies to right some wrongs, Herbie likes to immerse himself in classical music. He had become a bit of a celebrity in this area years ago in fact, by winning BBC Radio 3’s Essential Classics music quiz in record time every day, intriguing the listeners.

“Does this Herbie Goldberg really exist or is he just a figment of BBC’s imagination?”, famed radio presenter Rob Cowan said on the show one morning, as he read the name of their winner. Herbie had beaten every other listener at it yet again.

“In 2016, I went to their live show at the Royal Festival Hall and I walked up to Sarah Walker and said I am Herbie Goldberg, and she gave me a nice hug… she was so happy to see me”, Herbie recalled proudly as I sat in his cosy living room that has his precious collection of over five thousand classical music records and an amplifier that he has build himself.

He donned many hats. Being an astute story-teller was another and very often, these stories would end with a punchline like he has prepared them for a comedy set.

In one of his anecdotes from his childhood, he remembers dropping mathematics out of his A level subjects at school as his teacher was famously foul-smelling and lacked the self-awareness to do anything about it. Many more students followed likewise. “This country lost an entire generation of bright mathematicians because Mr. Handerson had bad breath”, Herbie chuckles at his joke.

Herbie Goldberg did, in fact, exist and not just exist, he thrived. In his latest, he is organising a rebellion to save a canteen caterer from being fired at a senior people’s club he often visits. “I sent off a mail to hundreds of members who now eat there more often, so she can make some money and we can convince the management to let her be”, Herbie says enthusiastically about the new challenge he is determined to win.