Advice on distance selling

mistiblu33

Hi,

we bought an expensive treadmill online approx 5 years ago, last weekend it stopped working, apparently the motor is still under warranty, when i rang the service department they said it would be £162 to send an engineer out, which we agreed to, now when the invoice arrived it was £195 they had added on VAT !! now at no time was this mentioned.
My question is....are they allowed to take more money than they quoted?

Mark_Hewitt

It's not a distance selling issue.

pendulum

The price should have included VAT, you could just pay what you were quoted and see what they do.
Is the treadmill fixed now?

derrick

If. "apparently the motor is still under warranty", why did you agree to any payment?

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bod1467

Parts-only warranty?

ThumbRemote

Any price quoted to you should have included VAT as you are a consumer not a business. However, can you prove what they quoted over the phone?

The_Pedant

I think one of the key questions may be who do the company normally deal with?
If it's a more expensive treadmill then is it something that would normally be sold to gyms etc? As a result, they may therefore deal more with companies and could get away with quoting prices excluding VAT.

If it was me, I would probably be inclined to try paying them the original quoted amount (as pendulum said) and put it in writing that is what you are paying. They have a few options then, to either write off the difference, take the full amount anyway (if it's a card payment), or write asking for the extra.

At the end of the day if you don't ask, you don't get.