First Choice EPC

benus333

I am having threats from them. I cancelled and was charged £15. I argued the toss before getting a 'pay by midnight or you will incur extra costs' email at which point I checked with C.A.B. who advised me I did have to pay. When I went to pay, the link had added £50 admin charge to make a total of £65. I contacted First choice who said that they (he - I think it's just one man) would not remove the additional costs.

I spoke to C.A.B. again who said that this was a breach of the terms and they dictated me a breach of contract letter. I sent this recorded delivery to the address, which was in Hemel Hempstead until a few weeks ago. Nobody was there. I received another email today saying the charge had gone right up again. I'm now waiting to speak to C.A.B tomorrow. I know that it was in breach of the terms to add the £50 before midnight so I'm kind of confident I can't be hit for more money, but legal stuff makes you nervous ... and I suspect that First choice tries its best to exploit that. A PO box in Spain is a bit of a dodgy new twist.

Steer clear.

bod1467

Bear in mind that the ONLY way they can try to MAKE you pay is for them (him?) to take you to court. Since they are (he is?) a business then YOU would have choice of court (as the consumer), so they (he) would have to travel to attend any hearing. The chances of such chancers actually doing this is negligible.

What's more likely to happen is that the "debt" would be passed to a debt collection company ... who have absolutely zilch power to make you pay. DC companies can be ignored - they CANNOT take you to court over any such "debt" they may have been handed/purchased.

benus333

Quote:
What's more likely to happen is that the "debt" would be passed to a debt collection company ... who have absolutely zilch power to make you pay. DC companies can be ignored - they CANNOT take you to court over any such "debt" they may have been handed/purchased.

That's interesting. Thanks. Still, I don't fancy having heavies banging on the door. Also, I'm in the process of moving and I don't want anything suspect on my credit rating. It is a dodgy company - they can't move the goal posts by changing the deadline when I agreed to pay the £15 pound.

bod1467

There will be no heavies banging on the door - at all. They might threaten it, but they can't do it. They'd get arrested if you called the police.

The only people who can do this are high court enforcement officers or bailiffs with a court warrant. And to get that far you'd have had to be taken to court, lost, received a judgement for payment, NOT paid it, and then they would have to pay to call in the bailiffs - ain't going to happen mate.

And remember - a debt collect CANNOT take you to court ... it would NOT BE THEIR DEBT!

JoeyMac

I received this email yesterday from First Choice and don't know what to do........any advise?

On 28/08/2014 you ordered an Energy Performance Certificate via our website from your ip Address of: 86.31.102.64. As per the terms and conditions of the order a booking fee of £9.95 became payable as soon as the assessor booked the appointment with you. You can view the terms and conditions by clicking here. The booking fee should have been paid prior to the appointment taking place which our records indicate was scheduled for 28/08/2014 at 20:00. We sent you 1 emails reminding you of this process. The process was also highlighted to you as you placed the order with us via the website.

Our records indicate that the booking fee payment was not made by 28/08/2014 at 20:00 and so a late payment administration charge of £14.95 was then added to your order. The combined booking fee and late payment administration charge of £24.90 should have been paid by 29/08/2014 at 20:00 however, this amount remained outstanding and a further administration charge of £50.00 was then added to your order. This brought the total amount outstanding as at 29/08/2014 at 20:00 to £74.90 which needed to be paid by 08/09/2014 in order to prevent further action from being taken and additional late payment charges added.

You have therefore left us with no alternative but to commence proceedings in order to recover the monies owed. A further administration charge of £125.00 has now been added to your order which brings the total amount owed to £199.90. You can pay this amount now by clicking here.

If this amount remains outstanding by 09/10/2014 date then our debt recovery department will pass the account to an external debt collection agency in order to recover the debt that is owed to First Choice EPC. A further charge of £250.00 will be added to the existing balance outstanding in the event the account is passed to our collections department. The total amount that we will seek to recover will be £449.90.

The debt collection agency will add a further charge equal to 15% of the total debt to cover their costs as per the terms and conditions.

In order to help you better understand these charges, we have created a questions and answers page which can be accessed by clicking here.

We strongly urge you to settle the outstanding charges at your earliest convenience.

Regards

ls2001

i got the same email as the last participant to this forum. I think it might follow the feedback from peterdowd and threaten them with harassment.

WhatTheFoxHat

I am an idiot for sharing my plastic details with this 'company' but don't they need to be registered somewhere or something?

Has anyone actually received a service or is this all just a scam to take payment?

I won't be sending them the £14.95 or any other charges. I'd love to meet these jokers in court. Still not a great experience.

DevCoder

Love one of their T&C's

Leave factually incorrect feedback about us on another publicly accessible website. A fine of £10,000 will be levied against any individual or organisation found to have left factually incorrect feedback about FirstChoiceEPC.com

WhatTheFoxHat

krisdorey wrote: »

Love one of their T&C's

Leave factually incorrect feedback about us on another publicly accessible website. A fine of £10,000 will be levied against any individual or organisation found to have left factually incorrect feedback about FirstChoiceEPC.com

Yeah I saw that. They call them terms and conditions but in fact they are listed only as 'terms' and hidden in the bottom right hand corner of the website.

I am currently emailing Mike- aka Michael Fox who has not answered any of my questions. Be careful what you say though we could all be fined!

ls2001

will write a letter with the following info:

[/LIST]no service was provided so there was no cost incurred to the company. The company didn't call on time and therefore didn't stand to their commitment.

under consumer contracts regulations 2014 the consumer is entitled to cancel within 14 days. Therefore the cancellation penalty is invalid.

This is a fraudulent action

Will report them to the office of fair trading.