Wages in lieu of notice might be worth discussing.

I suppose they might issue a summons, but what happens to the bike in the meantime and do the daily fees just rack up? Of course, they dont want the bike, they want the money. So offering the bike in return for the fees to be waived, just gives them the extra hassle of selling the bike, for less than the fees. The bike is still lost and the boy is down £450. The clampers need not have towed the bike, then the clamp fee wpuld have been only £125 and that might have been found in a day.

The moped cant be sold because it doesnt belong to the clampers. They wont return it without payment. Its not theft, clampers are allowed to enforce tresspass in this way. The main question is how to stop the fees racking up or does he abandon the bike? If he abandons the bike, is that the same as selling/scrapping it? What are the clampers allowed to do with it? Can the fees just rack on up until they reach a silly level and then do the clampers sue?

I have now been to look at the site. Goodlands Lane in Taunton. There are signs all over the place at eye level. Premier Parking. I didnt have my camera but the sins are very detailed. The fee at the moment is £410 plus £35 a day. My friend has phoned the clampers and have bee told the £35 a day will continue and he cannot abandon the bike. The fee will just keep going up. The thing is, up is up, and they cannot raise the money fast enough. So abandoning the bike by default is probably what will happen. The question then is: How will the clampers enforce what they believe becomes a debt? Is is possible they can mitigate the costs by returning the bike and therefore not incurr storage fees. The debt then has a fixed value? The real issue is that at 2am, the boy could not get the £125 and (even immediatly, we do not know) the bike was gone by 9am. This is where the costs then mount to beyond the value of the bike. Unfortunately, the boy is just 18, gosh they grow up so fast.

I am new to this problem. My friends 16 year old son had his moped clamped at 2am in a private residential area. He returned at 9am to sort it out only to find it had been towed. The clampers want £350 to release the bike (£125 of which is the clamping fee £225 is the towing fee), which they say is 25 miles away in another town. They will charge an extra £50 to take the boy to the compound. The bike was secondhand only two months ago and cost £450. My friends cannot afford the release fee for their son. This is all I know right now, and will check the signs and identify the clampers in the morning. My initial thoughts are that maybe the signs were not prominent/ illuminated. Also, if the bike is not valuable enough, is it a good tactic to just abandon it to the clampers? Will the release fee increase while my friends try to find the release fee? Also, he has no paperwork. It seems these were stuck to the moped, and were still stuck when the moped was towed. So we cant check if these were correctly issued.

Was it worth the hassle? Well, Yes. I could have accepted his initial offer, but I considered offering a counter proposal (bad idea) (I had no idea that a counter proposal had the effect of rejecting the first offer, I thought it would place two offers on the table). The chance being taken that he might just agree to my counter proposal. He didnt agree, but re offered the original partial refund (his big mistake). The problem was simply that he withdrew the offer after I accepted it. Thats why I had to go to court. I did mention the difficulties I faced, being a shop keeper in post 8 and the difficulty that simple profession was posing. A business owner is a second rate citizen in the eyes of the law, where consumer protection laws give protection to every one else who has an 'ordinary' job or no job. In this court case, it as clear that: 1. No refunds are entitlled for a cancelled order if you just change your mind. (we all knew that anyway). But you need a real solid breach of contract by the seller to get recompense (not just a clutching at straws argument that I had). 2. A retailer can promise you the earth and fail to deliver, almost at will ( if you use a business credit card to pay, it gives him carte blanche to abuse you, because he knows the law does not protect you anywhere near as much as a normal customer). The above is true, unless you ensure time is always of the essence for business and personal purchases. Then the dynamic switches to your powerful advantage instantly. Trouble is, we all know the basic consumer and soga type laws. But nobody actually orders an item from a shop and questions their delivery date. We all accept the date offered is the truth and not just a tempting date offered so the retailer makes the sale. Nobody really knows that Time of the Essence MUST be made part of your ordering process......nobody tells you that. I shant order a pizza without making time of the essence, ever again.

Well it was a very interesting two hour hearing. Better than any training seminar. I presented my argument regarding contract law allowing me to rescind if the delay was unreasonable, if I was misled, if he kept knowledge secret, and various other points showing bad faith. How if I as the one judged to be in breach of contract, then nevertheless he mad an offer a partial refund and withdrew it after I had accepted it. My argument was confident and largely un-interupted, I was on song and gave a good accounting of myself. The defendant had his go and stuck to the travelog of what happend. He had no case law to support him and agreed he had known of the annual shutdown but failed to tell me. There were a few questions and answers. And another opportunity to speak. I mentioned his lack to mitigate the costs, how he was trying to explain to the court that he had been charged full trade price £695 for a tank that was never made, how he tried to explain that a letter head with invoice details proved he had been charged £695. I argued it lacked vat number, company reg number and head office address and could never be construed as an actual invoice but a statement. that he failed to prove he had actually spent anything towards fulfilling my cancelled order. Then came the summing up by the judge. He recounted the whole matter and got everything spot on, so he did understand all the points argued. Then one by one he referred to each of my claims and discounted every one. Time was not of the essence, he hadnt acted in bad faith, he hadnt intentionally meant to mislead me, he had tried to get the tank delivered as soon as he could after the delay, I had no protection from consumer law as I as a business. And on those points I could not claim my £1000 deposit back and I as the one in breach of contract. Then he came to the partial refund correspondence. Whilst the defendant made me an offer of a partial refund £610, my reply saying I would accept the offer plus a £390 credit note constituted me rejecting the first offer and therefore the first offer would no longer exist. That his rejection of my suggested solution meant that both his first offer and my counter proposal had been rejected and neither the offers existed. But, (and then the homework started to work) The defendants reply rejecting my counter proposal, also reiterated his first offer, effectively making a third and new offer, that £610 was all he would pay. The judge accepted that even though I took three weeks to accept the offer, the offer was unconditional and his offering and my acceptance constituted a properly negotiated settlement. The judge said the defendant had shot himself in the foot and had to honour the offer of a partial refund. Judgement in my favour £610 plus £150 costs. So, I had paid a £1000 deposit and was able to reclaim £200 vat. My exposure to loss was £800. So in the end, my cancelling the order cost me £190. But for the careless offer to make a partial refund, the defendant would have won the day. The moral of this story. You must make time of the essence and when buying for your business you must make the transaction appear as a consumer purchase. You cannot expect to cancel an order and get your deposit back. The real shame is that if the defendant had really spent £695 plus more in buying other materials and this was a true loss to him, he has now another £760 loss when he pays the judgment. This means he may well have lost a total £1500 because I cancelled the contract. And all this despite the law being largely on his side. While I tried to get my full deposit back, because he had messed up my order, he has suffered quite a loss. I now feel a bit of a bully in doing to him something I would hate for my customers to do to me. The real lesson is to ensure we treat our customers who choose to buy from us, very well. We must fullfill our obligations speedily and in good faith. Had the defendant managed my order with more care, I would have been a delighted customer. This experience has been a renewed lesson, underlining the need to give exceptional customer service. I am never going to dissapoint my customers ever again.

An interesting development today. I receive a letter which has also been copied to the court, written to me by a gentleman who was in the habit of visiting the aquarium shop. He asks the owner of the shop if they had supplied the fish tank in my shop. The owner says they had taken the order but the contract had broken down and I was sueing him for the return of my deposit. The gentlemen then explains in his letter that he felt obliged to tell the aquarium shop owner his experience when his fiancee bought a wedding ring from my shop. He explains how I took the order for the wedding ring and promised a delivery date, which I failed to meet. After a number of promises and new delivery dates, he explains how he phones my shop as he was" now seeing red", to let me know of his upset. The wedding ring was eventually ready 4 weeks late. He explains how angry he was with my staff as they excused the delay as being out of their control and the busy time of year, being Christmas and how bad the whole experience was in dealing with me. He asks how I could give such poor service to my customers and then sue another shop keeper who does the same to me. He ends with saying he would be happy to attend court as a witness on behalf of the aquarium shop keeper to show that my business dealings were dubious and how professional the aquarium shop keeper had been in dealing with him over the years. It seems the letter was a put up job. Clearly the gentleman had a good relationship with the aquarium shop keeper and they have planned to write to the court to make me seem to be in a bad light. The thing that is interesting though, is this. The customer has never been a customer of mine and he never bought the wedding ring from me. After a couple hours trying to find the transaction to no avail, it occurred to me that he had bought the ring from another shop and was confused. So I asked a competitor jewellery shop in the same town if they had sold a wedding ring on the date specified. Lo and behold, they had sold a wedding ring to his fiancee at the address and date quoted. They remember the trouble they had and the delays in production and how angry the customer was. They gave him a discount because of the delays. So, what do we have here? A libelous letter written to the court? A slanderous discussion with the shopkeeper? A judge who will now think I conduct my business like the aquarium shop keeper conducts his? Or do we have a simple mistake, that he couldnt remember who he bought the ring from, and just thought it was from me? He may well have visited my shop and being a fish enthusiast , he would have noticed the aquarium now full of fish.(his letter says he has visited the aquarium shop every week for about ten years and knows the owner to be fair and honest and expert etc etc). He may have looked at my wedding rings too, when he noticed my aquarium. But he bought one from another shop. Is this just a forgetful man making a silly mistake and he genuinely may simply have forgotten that he didnt buy the wedding ring from me. Or, do we have something more than a mistake? It seems to me, that as a friend of the aquarium shop keeper,they would have chewed this over a few times and they have conspired to write the letter to the court to support his defence. The wording in the letter is very similar to the wording in an email the aquarium owner wrote to me. It seems that maybe the aquarium shop owner and the wedding ring buyer drafted the letter together. But I doubt the aquarium shop owner realises his friend has made a mistake. So, they do not yet know that they have accused me by mistake and the letter should never have been sent to the court as part of his defence. The thing is, what will the judge think of it? It is probably irrelevant to my claim and will probably only be read in his notes and dismissed, but the judge will not know that the seller of the wedding ring was not me. And once he has read it, it will be hard for him to disregard it from his mind. The defendant might even bring it up. What should I do?

OK. So the hearing is 11.30. Do I file at 9am and still give a copy to the defendant. Or do I file tomorrow and not give the defendant anything? Or is it better to just give them both tomorrow? I am beginning to get a good argument together and if I lose, the question of mitigating the damages could be useful. The defendant has done nothing to reduce the costs. Even by paying the full trade price for the tank and not insisting at least that the manufacturer still makes and delivers it. I cannot understand why the manufacturer would still charge him for the whole tank, yet not make it. Goodness, it could have been sold in 10 days on ebay for the trade price. Then the other equipment, pumps and filters he says he has suffered the cost of buying. Assuming they could not be sold to another customer, he has agreed they could have been returned to the supplier less a handling fee of 10%. So why did he not return them? Of course, he has produced the invoice from the tank manufacturer for the full trade price of the unmade tank. Trouble is, its just a word processed statement on a letterhead. Definately not a vat invoice and no vat number. Sounds fishy to me. I bet he never had to pay for the tank in the end.But he has a duty to mitigate, I would expect two or three letters to his supplier and their replies, to show he at least tried to get the fee waived. But if the fee is a genuine cost to him, then where is the tank? I was told they had only cut the glass for it. He might also try to get the profit on the fish that he didnt have to supply and the installation costs, so where is the evidence of the costs and profit margins to prove the figure. He needs to get up to £1000, and hasnt come up with any documentation to support it, apart from the purported invoice for the tank.

I am really bothered about providing the court with my argument, because I will also have to provide a copy to the defendant. Is it fair that he should get to hear my argument and plan a defence to it? He has not supplied me with his arguments. The hearing is in 4 days, so should I still send the argument (actually I would just pop them into the court in the morning, and a copy to the defendant). Will I be better off doing this, or staying silent? Do I get a benefit, as the defendant is clearly staying silent.

Can Contract Law help me? Contracts can be rescinded where one party fails to make adequate disclosure or misrepresentations during negotiations. Concealing what he privately knew and induced me into the contract with a reckless promise of delivery date.Knowing the factory was to close and the quoted date had a high probability of being missed by 3 weeks. Any ideas of other (non consumer based) laws? VERY URGENT. Should I tell the court and the defendant the arguments I intend to rely upon before the hearing?

Yep. I get the protection I need if I am a consumer, but face an uphill battle as a business user. The assumption I need to get across is that the consumer needs more protection , than a business whos expertise is in dealing with the products he buys and sells for his business. But where I buy a product not generally associated with my business, from a retail shop and not a trade supplier, and the product is one that is normally sold to the public. I assume I am actually in need of that protection as I am wearing a consumers hat when I buy the product and its only the location of that product which makes it purchased for my business. I should have taken the tank home first and later decided to take it to work. I still have no defence other than an argument. I need some specific law. The main concern is that when time is not of the essence, then I should have waited a reasonable amount of time for the retailer to deliver. I decided (maybe too hastily to cancel the order because the delay would be at least 2 weeks and probably 3 weeks. I reckon if I am quoted 3 weeks for delivery, a reasonable delay would be 3 or 4 more days, not 21.

I think there is an ambiguity here. I can buy anything from a shop (radio, book, stationery, clothes, white goods etc) and take it home, knowing I am covered by consumer law. Say I buy a microwave oven, of course its covered by consumer law. Say I buy two microwave ovens and take one home for my wife and the other goes into my staff room at work. Are you saying that one is covered by consumer law and the other is not? Then, lets say I am a white goods retailer and not a jeweller. I buy microwave ovens from a supplier, these are not covered by consumer law because I am not the consumer. They become subject to consumer law when the consumer buys them. Whats the difference with the fish tank? The only thing that has changed is that I, as a consumer decided to take it to work rather than to home. Does that one location lose me my statutory rights as a consumer?

Just re read the thread again. Why did the retailer write to your bank ???? Was it because he did not have your address? The bank of course wont divulge your address, so how can you be sued? Similar thing happend to me, I had two customers (friends shopping together), one spent £150 the other £230. I accidently processed the two transactions at £150. I realised my mistake at the end of the day. I hadnt taken the customers address, so I wrote to the bank, they refused to supply the customers address. I therefore sent my customer a letter, addressed it to the bank and asked them to send the letter to my customer at the address they held. They say they did forward the letter. But I have heard nothing from the customer who is clearly expecting to have gotten away with it. Total dishonesty in my book. So every few months I repeat the excercise, but it is clear the customer feels not obliged to pay the extra that I should have charged in the first place.

Thread 16 has it right. Have the retailer do a customer not present transaction.The answer is so simple and both parties are treated justly.