Fixtures & Fittings Error

pawpurrs

I would personally ask for how much you need to replace curtains, if the figure is too high, you can accept a lower figure. If they were old and nearing the end of their lifespan, I would accept less. I would say £45 per pair sounds very reasonable to me. I would ask for more.

Neddles

I think I would be pushing more to keep the curtains. If that happened to
us, there's no way I'd let them go.
The solicitor should cover the cost for the buyers to get new curtains.

Fire_Fox

Do you have any of the receipts for each pair of curtains? I would submit copies of each receipt and start negotiations from there - they will not all be worth £45, some more some less. I don't think it is unreasonable to start from the premise of what they cost, that is honest and it may help the solicitors claim from their insurance policies. You can look at the value of good quality second hand curtains on eBay, they are arranged by size, you can search for particular brands of material and you can also do an advanced search for completed listings.

martindow

Are these curtains really of great value to you? I've moved with curtains before with schemes to adapt them for the new house and invariably they have not been used and ended up in the loft. They have never seemed right in the new house.

Negotiate hard and see it as a cash bonus from your solicitor to set against their conveyancing bill.

dodgy

Hi,

As a follow up to the above, I packaged and sent the curtains to the buyers, so they would be happy.

I've suggested a second hand replacement cost, plus the cost of the courier to the solicitors and haven't heard anything back. After some chasing I've got the message 'it's with the partner', someone I (and many people on his board) know well.

I'm not holding my breath that they will ever reply, so I'd like to get a little more formal with them.

My first step, I assume, should be to resend my request in writing rather than by email, addressing it to the partner and giving a deadline for a response. This I will get onto this week.

After that, if they continue to ignore me, is this something I can take up with some sort of ombudsman? They are registered with the law society.

I've also thought about proceeding down the moneyclaim.gov.uk route, if that was an option ... but I'm not sure that's so clever when the people on the other side are a bunch of solicitors, at least one of whom specialises in civil litigation (so says their law society page).

Any advice would be gratefully received.

silvercar

If you here nothing, do another letter, giving a time limit to respond and then go to the Law Society.

dodgy

Just to close the loop, I sent them my request recorded delivery giving a deadline to respond. A few days before that they called to transfer the money, no discussion.

In the end our conveyancing ended up costing us negative money, but we did have to lose the curtains in the process. Overall we weren't too unhappy.

Fire_Fox

Chase the letter up again, you have nothing to lose but the time and very modest cost in writing another recorded delivery letter.