How can i recover my money?

duckie88

I was wondering if anyone had any advice that may help. Over a year ago i booked with a local florist for them to do my wedding flowers. I booked because the girl we met was fantastic and really seemed to understand what we wanted. I have since then found out she has left so a few months ago when we started going for meetings to arrange the flowers we had another staff member take over the order. She was pretty useless (often getting the names of flowers wrong!) she did not seem to understand what we wanted at all despite several meetings and countless pictures (she also regularly changed stories about how we could have some flowers, not others ect). Finally i had had enough of her and we found another florist (who i am happy to say is not only much better but is much cheaper too). We visited the shop to cancel the order with the original florist expecting them to say they would have to keep the original £30 non-refundable deposit but to give us the £300 part payment my grandma had made a few weeks back as a wedding present. However they are saying that they will not refund the full £300 as they have consultation costs they need to cover. They also say they have put a £40 deposit down on some flowers so they need to cover that (although so far they have offered no proof of this).
Does anyone have any advice on where we stand? I thought as we paid on a credit card we could recoup it through that but the credit card company did not sound optimistic with our chances when i talked to them earlier!
Ive been told that they have not technically broken any contract we may have had with them as our only contract was for them to deliver flowers but we have had to cancel with them as we lost faith in their ability to deliver high quality goods.

Hominu

You can't claim through a credit card just because you changed your mind, which appears to be the problem here. The fact that you think they are incompetent is not relevant.

What is relevant is what it says about cancellations in the terms and conditions that you agreed to when you placed the original order and made the deposit.

matttye

I think you'll have to take them to court if you want the money back.

This seems similar to a situation where you realise a builder is a cowboy and no good halfway through a project. You wouldn't let them finish the job, you'd ask them to stop as soon as you lost faith in their ability.

Surely they can get the £40 deposit back if you no longer require the flowers? I would think you could get that back at the very least.

chattychappy

duckie88 wrote: »

I thought as we paid on a credit card we could recoup it through that but the credit card company did not sound optimistic with our chances when i talked to them earlier!

Paying by credit card doesn't give you any extra protection. It just means that whatever rights you have against the shop for breach of contract/misrepresentation, you can also enforce against the CC. So the question then becomes whether you have grounds for "wriggling out" of the deal.

duckie88 wrote: »

Ive been told that they have not technically broken any contract we may have had with them as our only contract was for them to deliver flowers but we have had to cancel with them as we lost faith in their ability to deliver high quality goods.

Unfortunately "lost faith" is not enough - they haven't breached the contract (yet) as they haven't failed to deliver (yet). The law does recognise "anticipatory breach" - ie where it's obvious that a party will break the contract you don't have to wait until they do. But it's very hard to establish that - whatever your hunch.

I suppose you could argue a breach of contract in that the contract isn't simply for the supply of flowers. It's for a professional consultation service and the service isn't being delivered to a satisfactory service.

If the girl you liked had said she would be handling the case personally and on that basis you decided to go ahead, then you have got (weak) grounds to pull out. It doesn't help that you continued for a while with the new girl.

duckie88 wrote: »

We visited the shop to cancel the order with the original florist expecting them to say they would have to keep the original £30 non-refundable deposit but to give us the £300 part payment my grandma had made a few weeks back as a wedding present.

I think you need to see their T+Cs of trade (though if they weren't brought to your attention they might not apply). There might be something in there about cancellation rights. There is an argument that taking a "£30 non-refundable deposit" suggests that other monies paid in advance are refundable. Sounds tenuous, but a judge did accept this argument in a hearing I attended.

The fact that the £300 was from your grandma and was a wedding present is irrelevant, I'm afraid.

duckie88 wrote: »

However they are saying that they will not refund the full £300 as they have consultation costs they need to cover. They also say they have put a £40 deposit down on some flowers so they need to cover that (although so far they have offered no proof of this).

The "consultation costs" sounds like nonsense to me (unless the staff member was paid by the hour and would otherwise be at home, for example). Also you can argue that the "consultation" was not to a reasonable standard. The £40 deposit does sound more reasonable.

So this is my conclusion. You have five alternative ways to argue this and they are all rather unlikely I'm afraid:

1) There is something in the T+Cs that permits you to pull out; OR

2) They breached the contract. The girl you liked promised you she'd be handling the job personally and on this basis you signed up; OR

3) They breached the contract. The consultation part was an essential part of the service and they failed to deliver it to a satisfactory standard; OR

4) The requirement for a £30 "non-refundable" deposit implies that this is all you lose should you pull out of the deal in advance of delivery. So you are entitled to a refund of £300; OR

5) You've pulled out. They are entitled to damages for your breach of contract. That amounts to their costs so far + loss of profit. (ie whatever it takes to put them into the same financial position they would have been had you not pulled out). You have paid them £330. Their costs have been £40. You accept that. You don't accept "consultation costs" as the staff member would have been in the shop anyway - unless they can show otherwise. You therefore demand £290 back less any profit they can show you they would have made on the deal.

Recorded delivery letter, 14 days to pay up or you'll sue! But you welcome any reasonable offer.... Assuming you get nothing from them, I'd think carefully before going any further with it. If you do make a claim, you are free to argue different alternatives in parallel.

duckie88

Thanks for your advice guys that does help! I was shown no contract when I booked with them just told that there was a £30 non-refundable deposit which we would not get back if we cancelled. I therefore assumed they would just give us the £300 back when we cancelled. Yes I do realise that me changing my mind is probably not grounds to claim anything back but I really do feel if we continued with them we would get poor quality and not what we wanted at all. I cannot begin to stress how frustrating it was trying to get this girl to understand what we wanted, every time we went I thought maybe she will understand now but she ever did. She did on one occasion make up a small sample and it looked awful which made me convinced they would be a disaster on the wedding day!
As for consultation costs I argued on the telephone the other day that they should have none as the first time we visited (we just popped in) we were told we would have to make an appointment as only one girl was in the shop and she would need someone else there to watch the shop front. We made an appointment and went back to find it was just her again and she talked to us in between sorting other customers. She told me that because of seeing to us she had to stay behind after work to sort other orders out which she could have done had we not been there. Not really sure how I feel about this as she cannot prove to us that she did in fact have to stay behind but we could not prove that she didn't. I spoke to the manager on the phone who didn't really seem to have a clue. She told me I had cancelled because they wouldn't give me peonies (after I already said I was cancelling due to being unhappy with the service being provided) she called me a liar when I said the teapot I had leant them to practice the flowers in had been broken. She then told me they needed the £300 for delivery. When I asked to deliver what, she started telling me how ill she had been and that she was not prepared to deal with me now. I rang back the next day for her to put the phone down on me, and when I rang straight back the sales girl told me the manager did not want to speak to me. Even if they think their flowers are amazing their customer service skills are terrible!!

[Deleted User]

I don't have much experience with this but it would seem that you have a reasonable enough reason for cancelling. How far away is the wedding now? (i.e. how much notice are you giving them?)

Did you sign anything that mentioned that all monies were non-refundable? If not, then I don't see how they can withhold your money. I guess them telling you about the £30 deposit would constitute a verbal contract so that money is gone for good.

Her 'working late' is absolutely irrelevant and not your problem. Nor is any illness she may or may not be suffering from. All she is trying to do here is fob you off. The manager's refusal to speak with you is childish and she is probably just hoping that you will forget about it and leave her alone.

If you didn't sign anything and you have given a reasonable amount of notice then I reckon you'd probably win any small claims court proceedings but neither you or her will want to go to the hassle of doing that - you don't need to let her know that though.

Unfortunately, your best bet is to simply speak with her reasonable and be clear that you don't want the order and advise her that she should stop working on it immediately. Tell her that you're happy for her to keep the deposit but that you want the rest back. I wonder if it is worth speaking to your new florist and asking her how she normally deals with cancellations? She might be able to give you an idea of any costs that a business might incur from a customer cancelling.