Problems with countrywide

suteneko

Hi everyone, this is my first post on here so please be kind to me.

I think I need to give some back story before I go into my current problems so here goes:

Quite a while back I lost my job and was running up quite large debts just trying to keep paying my mortgage. So I decided to try to sell my house and in my stupidity I decided to use Bairstow Eves (countrywide) as my estate agents. Even though I got a few offers to buy my house through them they constantly messed me around. I did try starting a sale with them but again it was constant lies with all their fake promises. I had several arguments in store with the staff at the branch but every time the would not listen to me. Even when I told them to stop the sale of my house and contacted my (then) solicitor (appointed by them) to also stop the sale, I later found out the staff at Bairstow Eves had phoned the solicitor up and told her to resume the sale. It took another long phone call with that solicitor and got her to force Bairstow eves to stop this sale and stop having anything to do with my property.

So with that behind me I decided to try to make a private sale. I put an advertisement in my houses windows and got myself another (this time local solicitor). I had several inquires and eventually sold the house to someone. It ended up being the son of the the guy who was trying to buy via Bairstow Eves and I thought nothing more about it.

I later decided since I had a little money spare and was essentially homeless with no where to stay but crash at a few mates couches for the mean time, that I would go traveling. So here I am almost 7 months later and I get an email with a letter attached (dated 27th October).

*edit* It appears I'm not allowed to give a link to the scanned image yet since I'm a new poster *edit*

Stating I apparently owe Countrywide a substantial amount of money. Because I had no fixed-addess I changed my bank accounts address to my brother and apparently yesterday he was threatened by them and had to prove he wasn't me. He scanned the letter they gave me and emailed it to me today.

If my bank account is frozen by a court order (which apparently countrywides agents threatened my brother) I am stuck in Mexico and yet again if I pay this sum I am still stuck in Mexico with no money.

This is seriously messed up and I believe I don't owe them a single penny.

Can anyone give me any advise on what to do?

Thank you in advance,
Suteneko

Gordon_Hose

What are they claiming the money is owed for?

12bdebt3

Gordon_Hose wrote: »

What are they claiming the money is owed for?

I am guessing it is probably their cut of the fees for advertising the sale of the house?
I suppose they can't really force is, I doubt it'd stand in court but you should really contact them as it could blacklist your brothers property if they think you live there.

Gordon_Hose

arrontdep wrote: »

I am guessing it is probably their cut of the fees for advertising the sale of the house?
I suppose they can't really force is, I doubt it'd stand in court but you should really contact them as it could blacklist your brothers property if they think you live there.

Depends what was in the contract he signed with them. Most Estate Agents require exclusivity, and if you want to go with other Estate Agents you have to pay them a fee.

Dunno how that works when selling your house privately though.

fermi

arrontdep wrote: »

it could blacklist your brothers property if they think you live there.

Why should it?

Gordon_Hose

fermi wrote: »

Why should it?

lol, it won't... :rotfl:

climbgirl

You're a little big vague on the detail as to why you originally stopped the sale with Bairstow - what did they do to cause you to want to stop the sale?

If you have signed a contract of exclusivity with them and have gone on to sell the property to a buyer they originally introduced to you (or a relative of), then they might have some recourse to their claims.

Can you give us a bit more detail please?

suteneko

They are stating that it is their commission fee. But they did absolutely nothing for this sale and I never signed any exclusivity contract. I re-advertised privately and then people came to me directly. Funny how in a private sale you can close the whole thing in a matter of a couple of weeks.

climbgirl

Have you still got the contract you signed with them when you first agreed to go through them?

The thing that worries me is that the final buyer is related to somebody who first approached you through them. If it was somebody completely unrelated, I doubt they'd have a leg to stand on.

But I suspect the contract you signed (and I'm sure there must have been one originally) will have something written into it to preclude any buyers being introduced through Bairstow and then not using them to conclude the sale.

Can you check the original contract?

suteneko

RE: climbgirl -

There were quite a few very interested parties and after it taking many months of broken promises and getting nowhere. I requested they stop the sale and go with another interested party. Against my wishes they did not do this and continued to try to push through a sale I no longer wanted. This is at the point I contacted my then solicitor to pull the plug on the sale, which as already stated didn't go so well. Bairstow Eves were made aware that I simply could not afford to keep my mortgage going right from the start and their messing around not doing anything ran me up a massive debt as I was having to pay my mortgage on a credit card. They would constantly ignore me and had to keep contacting my old solicitor to find out what was happening. I ended up searching online and read lots of horror stories about how other seller and even buyers were treated by them. At one point I had to do a sit in at Bairstew Eves to get my advisor to stop hiding upstairs to come down and talk with me. So it goes without saying I was very unhappy with them.

-Please excuse any slowness in reply, I'm on a very slow and unstable connection where it takes minutes to load a page.-

climbgirl

Can you access the details in the contract you signed with them when you originally listed the house for sale? If you're abroad, can somebody else access those papers for you, friend or family?

I suspect the fine print in the original contract will be all important - and it's very hard to advise you on whether or not they are actually entitled to commission on the sale until we know exactly what the wording was in the original contract that you signed.

Appreciate that you're abroad, but is there someone who's storing your stuff for you who can get to the contract?