UK Roofing company taking the proverbial

[sam tyler]

Hi guys, Iv'e not been around much as of late and have had many years of good advice on here relating to my Halifax debt (which thanks to this forum will be statute barred in 5 months)

 

So just when I think it's all over I get a letter today from someone else seeking money.

 

Approx 3 months ago I asked for a free non obligation quote from a company to put a new roof on my house.

 

They called to the house and left a quote of £11,000 asking me to sign a provisional agreement subject to finance. I refused to sign this despite some pushy tactics by the salesperson and stated that I needed to think things over.

 

They telephoned about a week later then said they would drop the price to £10k.

I again said I'm not ready to commit to anything.

 

I then had a quote from another company who charged £4,800 for the work and proceeded to get the job done with them

 

The original company contacted me a few weeks later to see if we were still thinking about having this done and I stated that the job had been done (and cheaper) so they said thanks for the interest and contact us again should you need us in future.

 

Thinking nothing more of this I today received a letter demanding payment of £1,022 for their out of pocket expenses in providing the quote and if I pay this they wont come after me for their 35% cancellation fee of our verbal agreement for this work.

 

So imagine my surprise as I never agreed to having any work done and in fact refused to sign even the provisional agreement and stated I was not ready to commit to any work with their company.

 

So the choices they have given me is pay £1,022 now, or they will seek 35% of the £11,000 for their cancellation fee.

[BankFodder]

Post the letter here for us to see.

Also - report to the CAB/TS

 

Write them a letter telling them that they are conning you and that if they want to go to court - so be it.

[sam tyler]

This is an exact typing of their letter

 

 

Our Ref: XXXXXXXXXX

 

26th June 2014

 

Dear Sir

 

Without Prejudice

 

RE Upgrade of Roofing to your BISF Home

 

Further to our letter dated 12th march 2014, which followed the visit you requested, know the probable costs of the works to your home and more especially to our telephone call which followed where you advised that you had indeed proceeded to have your roof replaced by another company, we would indicate that you had already conducted a verbal contract with ourselves to proceed with the roofing and we had also agreed that we would accommodate your financial position in that your building society were only prepared to loan you the sum of £10,000 rather than the actual costs which we had agreed were £11,000.

 

We forwarded to you the paperwork for this amount which you failed to return and upon the subsequent telephone call indicated that you had proceeded to have the roofing doen with another firm as this was cheaper.

 

Under normal circumstances we would mzke a cancellation charge upon contract of 35% however and totally without prejudice we are prepared to relieve you of this cancellation charge subject to your payment of our out of pocket expenses.

 

Our out of pocket expenses are as follows

 

Our standard time charges are £50 per hour plus VAT and the time factor including time spent at your home and travel to and from our offices is in the region of 10 hours which equates to £500 plus VAT.

 

Our travel costs are worked out at the AA rate for the vehicle involved which is indicated at £0.7726 with a total mileage of 435 return at therefore a cost of £336.08 plus VAT

 

We therefore look to your remittance of £836.08 plus VAT at total of £1002.30 due and payable within the next 14 (say fourteen calendar days)

 

Yours faithfully

[sam tyler]

Okay I've slightly edited this based on a suggestion here

 

Dear xxxxxx

 

Following your letter dated 26th June 2014 which requests payment of £1,002.30.

 

You were originally invited to our premises whereupon you agreed to provide a free non obligation quote for potential work to be carried out to our property. This was agreed by telephone prior to your visit.

 

When you arrived at our property you stated that you were also carrying out assessments in the Newport area on the same visit which made the journey for you worthwhile.

 

We discussed the potential work that was required for our property and you stated that it would cost £11,000 for your company to complete required work to the roof and £14,000 for you to make repairs to the walls.

 

You then asked me to sign a provisional contract subject to us obtaining the necessary funding which I declined to do. You stated that there would be no obligation if the funding was not agreed and again asked that I sign. Once again I declined to sign any contract with you and stated that I would in any case need to firstly discuss the matter with my partner who was not in attendance at our meeting before proceeding with any agreement to complete any of the mentioned tasks.

 

You then left the property and contacted me by telephone about a week later to see if I has discussed this with my partner whereupon you were advised that we were still in discussion over this matter. Not content with this answer, you then asked if I had any finance agreed yet and I advised you that I had nothing arranged and I would probably only be able to borrow around £10,000 anyway which would not have been sufficient so we should leave it there. In response you then stated that you would call us back in a day or two to see if anything has changed.

 

You telephoned me two days later stating that on reflection you would be able to drop your initial price of your roof estimate to £10,000 if we agreed to this work being done. I immediately explained that we were still considering the original proposal and still had not arranged any finance and we stated that we would contact you should we wish to proceed with any work. You asked if you could contact us again in a few weeks time by telephone to see what we had in fact decided which we agreed to you doing.

 

We then heard nothing further from you for a number of weeks and it was during this time that we obtained a quote from another company who requested £4,800 for the roof plus the additional annex of the house for which you had originally quoted £11,000 for the roof only.

 

Following this quote, we obtained the necessary finance and allowed the company concerned to complete the work.

 

You then contacted us again by telephone where we advised you that work on the roof had been completed by another company. You stated that you did not believe how another company could do the work for this price but you thanked us for our interest and invited us to contact you in future should we ever require the services of your company.

 

We then heard nothing further until 26th June 2014 when you sent us a letter requesting payment in the amount of £1,002.30 stating that you would agree to wave a cancellation fee if we paid your out of pocket expenses.

 

We would at this point refer you to the original nature of your visit where you agreed to provide a free no obligation estimate for any potential work and the fact that on the day of your visit I twice refused to enter into any contract with you and refused to sign even a potential contract subject to finance as I explained that I was unable to make any definite decisions regarding this work before speaking with my partner and that we had not yet looked into the option of obtaining the appropriate funding and did not know what amount would even be available to us. I explained that this would need to be fully investigated prior to agreeing to any work even if we decided to proceed.

 

We therefore believe that no written or verbal contract has ever existed between us as you were specifically advised that I did not wish to sign any agreements or make any final decisions.

 

I would also point out that a verbal agreement is only legally binding if there was an actual agreement on the services to be performed and an agreement was reached on remuneration for this service, neither of which were definitely agreed to and this is backed up in your own letter where you state that you called to our property to discuss “probable costs” for work to our property.

 

We therefore dispute any cancellation charge as clearly no verbal or written contract has ever existed.

 

We also dispute any charges for your out of pocket expenses as you had originally agreed to provide a free no obligation estimate.

 

As such we shall not be forwarding to you any payment for your costs or out of pocket expenses as all charges relating to this matter are wholly disputed for the reasons laid out within this letter.

 

Furthermore we would also point out that any such County Court Claim claim relating to this matter would be vexatiously defended on the grounds of there being no existing verbal or written contract between us necessitating an application then being made to the court for our costs in mounting a defence to what we strongly believe would be a frivolous law suit.

 

We also consider it only fair to advise you that any further requests for this payment will result in our contacting Trading Standards as well as a number of regulatory bodies and trade federations regarding this matter as it is our belief that you are attempting to extort money for the purpose of financial gain where no obvious contract exists. Should this be proven to be the case, a claim would then be issued against your company on this basis.

 

In conclusion, we would expect to receive your favourable reply within a period not exceeding 14 days confirming that no further action is to be taken regarding this matter as failure to provide this will result in (but not limited to) the action set out within this letter.

 

Yours Sincerely,

[ashmk]

Chancers!

[rebel11]

Do they belong to any Tradesman organizations?

[sam tyler]

Thing is, I'm determined to fight this but I wonder how many people they have done this to that have caved in and paid.

 

 

Anyone see any problems with my letter before I send it off?

[sam tyler]

Do they belong to any Tradesman organizations?

 

 

not sure how do I check?

[rebel11]

If you've got a leaflet or they have a webpage it normally says at the bottom.

 

Do they belong to any Tradesman organizations?

 

 

not sure how do I check?

[citizenB]

I would change ..

 

"vexatiously defended" to

 

"vigorously defended" or "defended vigorously"

[Jam_Buttie]

Brilliant letter! Send recorded.

[rebel11]

Hi Sam

 

If you want to 'name' the company and warn others of what they are letting themselves info when they invite these professional to provide a 'free quote'.

[ScarletPimpernel]

I'd be more inclined to send them a short, sharp rebuff, rather than engage in argument that invites a response.

 

So:

 

Dear sirs

 

I refer to your letter dated xxxxx.

 

Any liability to your company is denied. Any proceedings you bring will be vigorously defended.

 

Yours etc.

[silverfox1961]

Hi Sam,

You may feel nervous about naming and shaming however, if you wish, you can accept a private message from one of the team and you could give the name to them and we can do some investigatory work behind the scenes.

 

As has been said, ruddy chancers. They would have a damned hard job proving you verbally agreed to anything.

[rebel11]

No doubt this company has previous form, it's very 'brazen', they've done it before and people have foolishly paid up, not knowing how to deal with the matter.

[sam tyler]

Hi Sam,

You may feel nervous about naming and shaming however, if you wish, you can accept a private message from one of the team and you could give the name to them and we can do some investigatory work behind the scenes.

 

As has been said, ruddy chancers. They would have a damned hard job proving you verbally agreed to anything.

 

 

Sure, I'm happy to do that if someone wants to pm me,

 

my letter has been sent to them today so hopefully it will spoil their weekend as their letter almost did to mine last week

[Conniff]

They are not shown on Companies House and the following is not shown on their website:

 

 

The full company name, registered number, registered office address and place of registration (e.g. registered in England and Wales)

must be shown on all business letters, order forms and websites.

 

 

Are they on the letters you have received ?

 

 

Have a think about reporting them.

[silverfox1961]

I have just emailed them asking for their registration details. Wonder if I will get a reply

[sam tyler]

The only letter/leaflet I have is their demand for money, it has their name, address, phone number, email and web site details but says nothing about any registered number or registered office address.

 

In my letter I clearly gave them 14 days to respond stating that I would report and name and shame them otherwise, the time is nearly up and I've heard nothing yet so a few more days then it's time to start

[silverfox1961]

As above, I cannot find any details of them. They did respond to my email, not with a registered number but a request for me to call them as they get a lot of 'spam'

 

This is a poor excuse.

 

Sam, I will let you name them at your convenience. I cannot see any issue here.

 

I will also find out how to complain to the authorities about this company.

[silverfox1961]

I suggest Trading Standards although they may pass you on to CAB

 

http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/living/business/tradingstandards/contactatradingstandardsofficer/

 

Also, the Insolvency service has the ability to complain to but has strict rules on who they can investigate.

 

https://www.gov.uk/complain-about-a-limited-company

[sam tyler]

Okay well I've just received letter number 2 from this company

 

They have apparently withdrawn their offer of allowing me to pay £1,000 and are going ahead with a county court claim for £3,850 for breach of contract.

 

They have disputed some of the facts in my letter stating that we arranged a price in principle over the telephone and the appointment to come here was a formal inspection which is simply untrue.

 

They also state that my letter is an attempt at financial blackmail not to proceed with any case and that should I carry out any of my threats they will pursue me for damages and defamation. They will also show the courts the threats I have apparently made

 

They have also stated that I told them that I had finance in place by my mortgage lender. This is again untrue as I did not even apply for any finance until well after the time the company came to the property and the loan was taken out about 6 weeks after this date and at no time did I ever even approach my mortgage lender as the loan was acquired elsewhere.

 

They do admit that my partner wasn't present but they have stated I told them I could make all decisions, again not true

 

So I am going to do a final response disputing most of what thy have claimed and basically say please feel free to go to court. If they didn't like coming all this way the first time surely they would need to do it again when I defend the claim.

 

The way the letter is written they may just decide to file a claim and hope for the best however I still don't see how they can prove their case which is surely their responsibility to do so.

 

The fact I can prove that no finance was in place at the time of the appointment should help as why would anyone agree to a contract when they haven't even looked at funding it, also if I agreed to go ahead why did I refuse to sign his in principal contract?

[spamheed]

Why doesn't this ever happen to me????

 

 

I would love the opportunity to crucify someone for bringing such a claim in such a cack handed manner, they haven't got a leg to stand on.

[sam tyler]

OK Guys this is my final response to their new letter. What do you think ?

 

Final Response

 

Dear Sirs,

 

Please consider this as my final response to your letter regarding the alleged verbal contract.

 

In your most recent letter dated 8th July 2014 you have stated a number of inaccuracies that I wish to bring to your attention.

 

You state that I informed you that I was a financial adviser and based on this you would expect someone within this profession to be familiar with the process of obtaining finance. I remind you that I actually informed you that I work as a Financial Inclusion Worker and explained that this meant that I work as a debt and benefits caseworker for the Citizens Advice Bureau.

 

You also indicate that I stated at the time that finance had been partially discussed with our mortgage lender by this point which is simply not true. At no time was any finance ever discussed with our mortgage lender as the loan which was eventually taken out many weeks after your visit to our property was actually obtained from a lender independent from our mortgage company and you have never been advised otherwise.

 

I also dispute that you were advised that I make all of the decisions concerning financial commitments for the household. My partner is jointly named on the mortgage and as such has a vested financial interest in the property therefore I would not hold the authority to make such decisions myself.

 

On the day of your visit you were actually advised that I would in fact need to speak with my partner first regarding any potential work and then look into options of finance which is partly why I refused to sign any provisional contract with you, despite you attempting to push this issue and stating that the contract could be made “subject to finance”, therefore making it necessary for me to make a second refusal.

 

I note with interest your latest letter that you agree no contract existed following your visit to our property, however you state that during the occasion that you contacted me by telephone on March 12th and offered to reduce your price for work (for the roof only) to £10,000 that this offer was accepted and that you sent out a formal written contract based on this acceptance. This again is wholly inaccurate as you were specifically advised during this telephone call that I would again need to discuss the new offer with my partner. I would also point out that no finance had been sought or agreed at this point. I would also be most interested to know if the written contract you sent out

was solely in my name or joint names with my partner who holds a substantial financial interest over the property.

 

Despite this, your letter then states that I had the option at this point of returning the paperwork to you to discontinue the contract. I would point out that there was no contract to discontinue and if this was the case why would you now be pursuing a claim based on your financial loss if I was freely able to discontinue the alleged contract at this time without penalty as your loss would have been the same.

 

I also dispute that your final telephone conversation was made to find out what was taking so long. The call (weeks later) was instead made to see if we had reached any decisions regarding the proposed work with your company and it was at this time that you were advised that the work had been completed elsewhere. I would put it to you that if your description of these events was accurate why then would your representative state that if we ever need the services of your company in future to feel free to make contact? At no point during this telephone call was anything mentioned regarding any breach of contract or penalty charges as your representative, who had previously identified himself as a partner in the business, clearly understood that no such contract had ever existed.

 

I would also put the question to you, why if I had wished to go ahead with the proposed works as you have stated, would I have twice refused to sign a provisional contract with your representative and then not signed and returned any paperwork which you subsequently sent to me?

 

In my previous letter I also advised you that for any verbal agreement to be legally binding an actual agreement on the services to be performed and an agreement on remuneration for this service have to be fixed in place and agreed upon. Once again I have shown this not to be the case which can easily be evidenced by the date our finance was applied for and finalised, which was many weeks following your appointment. The finance was in fact only finalised following the quote from the second company who actually performed the work which is again easily evidenced in my paperwork.

 

I do not believe that any responsible person would simply agree to this scale of work without first having in place at least an in principal agreement for finance which was not the case here.

 

You also state that you would have been happy to provide a distance quote, however considering the type of work involved I find it hard to see how this could be obtained with any degree of accuracy and during the initial telephone call you had actually agreed to provide a free no obligation quotation.

 

Once again, I fully dispute any breach of contract or that any such contract whether verbal or written has ever existed as you have so far provided no evidence to the contrary other than the spoken word of your representative replicated in your written catalogue of events, most of which are highly disputed.

 

Furthermore I do not believe that any further communication between our parties will serve any further interest and I invite you to pursue a claim through the County Court process should you believe that you have a genuine grievance. I would again remind you however that any such claim will be defended at County Court as I believe that I will be able to show through on the burden of evidence that no contract has ever existed in this case.

 

 

Yours Sincerely,

[dcakiller]

I would also get in touch with BBC watchdog/rouge traders