Looking for advice please,

I have discovered my 16 year old son signed up to soccersixes t&c's and ticked a box on line to say he was over 18 yrs old. All was going well until his team mates starting dropping out and basically my son has been left with spiralling out costs as he was unable to get a weekly team to play.

Myself and his dad knew nothing about what he had done, until he confessed. I have written to soccersixes explaining that my son is only 16 years of age, and that he can not afford to meet these costs.

I have also tried to speak to them, sent text messages and emails and they have all been ignored. Today my son received a letter advising he has amounts to be paid within 7 days or they may take court action. My son or ourselves do not have the money to pay.

I accept my son is in the wrong for ticking to confirm he is over 18 but any advice would be appreciated.

Under 16's cant sign a legally binding contract like that anyway, so the contract is void from the start. They really should have performed an ID check. They also wont take court action, and if they do, theres a lengthy chain to go down, and iirc they cant take a 16 year old to court like that anyway.

Upon being notified, they should really investigate. But this being soccersizes, just like the gyms admin companies harlands, they really dont care. They just want the money.

What did you send them? Dont go being all soft footed and saying please do this and that. You have to put your footdown as they allowed an underage child to create a contract with them.

Thank you for the advice,

I spent many hours on the internet looking for legal advice to see if they can take a minor to court and haven't found anything to say they will & win the case. I sent them a recorded letter advising that I have discovered my son had signed up to their t&c's and that he was not 18 only 16 and given his age the contract is invalid.

I advised he has no means of settling the spiralling costs and if they didn't respond by 21st August I will take it the contract is cancelled, but I have had no response to my letter. I also asked them to deal with me directly, not my son as he is 16 years of age but they still continued to text my son which I have not got him to block the number. Like I said above my son received a letter today threating to take him to court if he doesn't pay £288 within 7 days.

I accept my son is in the wrong signing up to these t&c's and he has been dealt with by us, but the fact is he doesn't have the money to pay this nor do we.

Sorry but the advice which has been given above about void contracts by minors is not correct because your son has represented himself as being over 18

However this is not the first time we have heard about this kind of thing

I'm away at the moment so I'm not able to deal with it more fully but please have a look on the forum and you will see the kind of thing that happens and the reaction of the company

Please could you tell us a bit more as to how the sum claimed is calculated

What they have listed is

no attendance fees £62.00,

Arrears £102.00,

4 weeks notice period £124.00,

if these not paid within 7 days then the amounts mentioned plus remaining seasons fees £620.00 and court costs is claimed £200.00.

They have not broken down the costs of what period these costs are for.

My opinion is that at the very worst they are entitled to recover any expenses or costs incurred by them as a result of the cancelled games

Anything else would amount to an unenforceable penalty

I think that you should start off by writing to them and telling them firstly your son is 16 and in any event you will not be paying and you may consider paying any losses actually incurred if they will send you a full breakdown of the money they are seeking

Tell them that in any event if they take you to court they will have to do this anyway so they might as well do it now

Tell them that if they refuse to do it then you will explain to the court that they have refused to give you a breakdown of the invoice and the money which they purport to be seeking amounts to an unreasonable penalty

you should also tell them that now that they are on notice that your son is under 18 that they should be dealing with you personally

Tell them also that if they decide to Sue then they should be sueing you on behalf of your son

thank you again for the advice,, think we have a long road ahead of us resolving this issue.

by the way they would only be entitled if at all to claim reasonable expenses incurred up and to the date which they had notice that the agreement was being cancelled

okay, if I was to write to them asking for a breakdown and not pay anything within the 7 days as they have requested, do you think they will still commence court action?

we've lots of history wit these people

https://cse.google.co.uk/cse?cx=partner-pub-8889411648654839:6449422593&ie=UTF-8&q=+soccersixes&sa=Search+CAG

sadly most threads die a death and the people don't return

so we must assume that simply ignoring them works

oh I can see it isn't just my son whose been an idiot then, shame the others haven't reported back what the outcome was.

You could certainly take the harder line advised above but I certainly wouldn't ignore them

They need to understand that if they bring an action but there will be a fight

Maybe the best thing to do is to send them a single letter telling them that if they will provide you with a list of the reason expenses which they have incurred then you may be prepared to considerate but in principle you prefer to go to court

there a letter in one of those threads listed above I think

Thank you all for the advice, I will prepare a letter tomorrow asking for a breakdown of their invoice, but think I will risk going to court with my son, if it doesn’t go in my sons favour will just have to see what monthly payment they will accept as my son doesn’t have the funds or ourselves

Court is a LONG way off if they ever even bother with it. Youre talking months. pre action letter has to be sent, then you have 30 days to fill it in or stall them for longer, then court documents which can be another month for filing, then 2-3 months for hearing if it ever gets that far.

So thats easily a good 5 months or longer

Sadly i bet a lot of people have no idea what happens and think they can take them there next week and win.

I have no idea how things work, never been in this situation before so all the advice given is much appreciated. I was going to see a solicitor for advice but their fees are £100 an hour,, citizens advice weren’t very helpful either so it’s been reassuring to seek advice from you guys, thanks again

You dont need a solicitor. I would advise either ignoring them, see what happens next, as they have to follow a set procedure. If they try court without following it, you can shoot the claim down easily. Or you can demand , in writing, a full breakdown of the amount owed.

Who are they now writing to, you or son?

That makes a big difference as to how they think it will pan out.

if they have decided to chase you then they are gambling on that you have feelings of guilt ect and will pay up his debts without really going into the detail of how it all came about.

Now they will have to produce proper invoices and account activity to prove what is owed and the chances are they cant justify much of what they are currently claiming

lastly, they of course have no contract with you so again by engaging with you they are relyng on hope or bluff.

If they are still addresising your son them yes,

they can sue but they wont get anything until he turns 18 and then they have to go back to court to enforce any order already granted and this all takes time and money and should he decide to fight th claim there is no certaity of them getting anything in the first pplace so all a big risk for them.

Lastly you can sue other examples to throw back at them because dereliction is a reason for not keeping to a contract. Any other team drop out of the league? well, then not what he signed up for so their arguments start to get holes in them.

Let them make the moves and respond if necessary but dont invite them to do their worst

Come back here when you next get a letter because the ones you ahve had so far arent doing any harm