hiya, to clarify, the agreed sum is x the disputed sum is y on the day we paid them x in cash and y via cheque we have since cancelled the cheque (ie y) therefore the have recieved the agreed amount, but we have withheld the disputed amount hope than clarifies things

JonCris, Thanks for your comments and I appreciate your point of view, and apologise if i came across a bit strong yesterday. Hopefully though it wont get as far as court (and there are other steps to be taken in between, such as trading standards and the BAR arbitration service for example). Its always difficult when ideally should do one thing but end up doing another. We weighed up the pros and cons of cancelling the chequ vs our defence in court and made the descision accordingly and whilst a court would probably take the view that we shouldnt of cancelled, we would push for the duress angle. In my experience of of the law its generally a very grey area with issues solved by matters of opinion amd who makes the most compelling argument. obviously this is not always the case, but in this instance i think our argument is very compelling and outweighs the decision we made in witholding their funds. also we have informed them in writing as to our intentions and why we dispute the additional costs so from that point of view we have been upfront with them. The letter has now been delivered (recorded delivery) so the ball is in their court and will let you know their response in due course.

joe.inom #37. sorry, not sure totally what you mean, but i think you are trying to say that we shouldnt go with the cheapest one? my previous posts say that we had used this company before and they were excellent. so why shouldnt i use them again, especially if they happened to be the cheapest also?

JonCris (post #36) Whilst i agree with your sentiments as far as court proceedings go, why should i pay them and then try to claim the money back? that only plays into their hands as they get the money and then i have to use yet more money to claim it back. if its that important to them and they believe their case to be strong enough then we can by all means take it to court and have a rumble. but i dont subscibe to the theory that says that you should play by the rules when those rules have clearly been broken. We are not talking about a reputable company here otherwise they would not have done what they did in the first place, besides which, it is easy for you say we could have "albeit inconveniently have refused to pay at the time". how exactly? especially when there are 5 very large men in your house having spent the best part of 2 hours unloading your stuff. its easy to say these things when you are not directly involved and we would all like to live our lives by our morals etc, however sometimes it is not that easy. me and my wife did not want a potential confrontation at our new house, particualrly after having had one at the old house. besides which it was not the removal men on the ground that we had an argument with, it was their office based staff who phoned us up to tell us. I would have loved to be strong enough to confront them and say 'youre not getting your money' but frankly i had spent the last 7 hours having a very very stressful time with the loading of our stuff, a very stressful journey to our new home and then the worry of the unloading. on top of the very stressful week of packing & sorting things out etc. i wasnt physically or mentally up for the additional challenge of a confrontation, neither was my wife, and therefore we figured that giving them a cheque for the extra and then fighting about it afterwards when we had had the time and energy to recover would be a far better option. Also from your post 34 I do happen to think it was both fraud and illegal. Therefore i believe i am well within my rights to withold payment of something that i felt i was co-erced into paying in the first place. to reiterate my previous comments we DID pay them the ageed, quoted ammount in cash, and paid the 'extra' by cheque. We are simply withholding the additional sum as we do not think it is justified.

thanks, have rang the bank at lunch and cancelled the cheque.got to be on a winner as the very nice lady isn't even going to charge me for cancelling as she thinks the removal company are being so awful!will put together a letter tonight and send it tomorrow.the only thing my wife is slightly worried about is whether they 'send the boys round' to collect the money in person, but that would be highly irregular and im sure we could call the police in that instance.anyway will let you know what happens...

woah there tigers! firstly apologies for the lack of response thus far, i was only able to do a quick post at a friends house on sunday as i have no internet yet at my new property, and have had to wait until my return to work today to log back on. ive done some ringing round etc and obviously read your posts (thank-you) and will try and answer some of your points. (1) it was a Written Quotation not an estimate (2) it was based on information given by ourselves as the companys estimator was away on holiday (3) the quotation is for a lump sum figure to "remove our furniture and effects". No itemised listing etc now, i am of the understanding that a quotation is a binding contract, wheras an estimate can be altered. whislt i understand that the information provided to the company was by us, i would argue that we are neither qualified quantity estimators, and that as the company admited that their estimator was on holiday, then in producing a quotation (not an estimate) the risk lies with them in assuring themselves that the information they use to provide that quotation is accurate. at least thats how it works in my industry (civil egineering). if a contractor provides a lump sum quote, its up to him to make sure the information is accurate, not the client. otherwise he proivides an estimate, thereby reducing his risk as he is able to alter the final ammount based on circumstances. if the removal company had provided an estimate, i would not have argued as there point would be valid. however it was a quotation. in addition to this we telephoned them on the monday after recieving their quotation in the post (before the removal on the thursday) to check that they were still happy to proceed with the removal based on the price they provided, and they said yes. so as far as i am concerned we as their clients gave them the opportunity to change their price. also the same company moved us into our property 2 years ago, and therfore we assumed that they would still have a record of the number of vans/ quantity of stuff we have and would have used that information in their quote. indeed they even stated that we have used 2 vans last time to which i countered with the above argument. The quotation alsoi makes no reference to volumes/quantities or numbers of vans required, its simply a fixed price, therefore again, as clients we cannot be expected to know what they have and have not quoted for if they do not provide this information within their quote. FYI their quote was approx £150 cheaper then the next highest, therefore not significantly lower enough for us to think they had not quoted correctly as it can reasnobly be assumed that they were being competitive, particulalry as we had used them last time. The nature of their claim for additional monies is dubious at best, particularly as they stated initially that it would be double the total cost, and then (quote) 'did us a deal' for the other van. also they had started to load the first van before informing us that a second would be required again a dubious practice as it would have been obvious to them before they started that an additional van would be required and therefore should not have commenced work without obtaining our agreement beforehand. as regards payment for the additional monies, we were made to do this under duress however paid for the extra via cheque. we intend to cancel this cheque as we believe it was obtained unlawfully and we now dispute it and if they want to go to court to get it, fine as we think we have a good case for withholding the funds. as for trading standards, its a bot of an idle threat really as i doubt they want to become involved however its better than nothing. anyway hope thats given you all something more to work with. thanks.

Hi, Basically we recieved a quotation from 3 different companies and chose the lowest quote to use for our removal. On the day of removal the people came, started to load up and then informed us that we would need to pay more as we needed another van for our belongings. We argued that this was irrelevant as they had provided a quotation and therefore this constituted a legally binding agreement and that if they had not priced this correctly it was their problem not ours. They then said that we either agree to the new price or they would go home. Obviously we had no choice as we could not get anone else to remove us at such short notice and needed to be out of the property that day. Can anyone please provide any furhter information such as: - what is the legal definition of quotation and what act is this described in? - we were made to agree under duress therfore what legal documentation does this fall under? - who can we complain to? any help/advice will be gratefull recieved. many thanks.

hi, many thanks for that, just a bit more clarification if possible 2. the rental agreement was with the landlord as a private individual and not with his company. we have checked the land register for the house, and it is regestered with him as a private individual. therefore can we refer this to trading standars/the police as fraud (claiming goods etc by deception)? No. why is that? 4. the amount he is asking for is plain wrong, given that he retained our deposit, and we have since found out that he now has people occupying the property. by our rekoning the maximum alleged amount he could claim for is 2 months (6 months left on contract, minus one month deposit, minus 3 months as he now has new tenants). A landlord has a choice - preserve the tenancy or re-enter; he cannot re-enter and relet and claim two lots of rent for the same period. As soon as the landlord took back control of the property your tenancy came to an end and with it the liability to pay rent from the day of re-entry. can you point us to where this is found in law, ie the paragraph etc of which act (housing act etc). so basically we can write to him saying we dispute the alleged ammount owed as he has re-entered the property? 5. i have heard that we can dispute the debt with daniels silverman and they have to leave us alone - how exactly do we do this? Not quite sure what you mean by that. if we write to daniels silverman saying we dispute this debt and are writing to the landlord directly, and they must freeze all action and remove any credit markers etc as per fair trading rules?

hi, I will try and explain the situation as best as i can... We basically re-located to a new area, after spending 5 years in residential housing, found a house to rent, and contacted landlord. Met with landlords agent (his wife) who had a standard 12 month assured shorthold tenancy agreement with her. The original had been pre-signed by the landlord and she brought with her a photocopy, the photocopy pre-signed by herself. It was for 12 months at £650/month with 1 months rent as deposit, and we signed our bit, however we made it clear at the time that we would be looking for a house to buy before the tenancy ended (due to one of our children being disabled, and us needing our own property, as our child requires special adaptations only avaliable in a privately owned property) Fast forward 4 months and we found a property to buy. We informed the landlord in writing that we would be moving out in 2 months time, asked him to release us from the contract early, and placed adverts in the local papers etc to find new tenants, of which there were at least 4 interested parties. We sent the landlord 2 more letters keeping him informed of our leaving date. We left 2 months later (6 months early) with the landlord had failed to appoint new tenants, and us not having recieved anything in response to our 3 letters. We met with his agent to pass the keys over and to inspect the property, which she did and was satisfied with its condition. Then the problems started. The landlord wrote to us to say he had retained our deposit to mitigate his losses. Then about a 2 months later (a month ago) we recieved a letter from Daniels Silverman requesting nearly £4k from our landlords company. We subsequently requested clarification of the alleged debt, and recieved a copy of our rental agreement as 'proof'. the points i would like to clarify (if possible) are: 1. was the rental agreement legal in the first place as his signature was a photocopy, and he was not present at the signing? 2. the rental agreement was with the landlord as a private individual and not with his company. we have checked the land register for the house, and it is regestered with him as a private individual. therefore can we refer this to trading standars/the police as fraud (claiming goods etc by deception)? 3. as we pointed out our intentions to leave early when we signed, and as we tried to mitigate his losses, have we got grounds to claim he is being unreasnoble? 4. the amount he is asking for is plain wrong, given that he retained our deposit, and we have since found out that he now has people occupying the property. by our rekoning the maximum alleged amount he could claim for is 2 months (6 months left on contract, minus one month deposit, minus 3 months as he now has new tenants). 5. i have heard that we can dispute the debt with daniels silverman and they have to leave us alone - how exactly do we do this? there are probably other things to add, but this will do for now. any help will be greatly recieved as this is creating an extremely horrible situation for our family. thanks.