Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013

frugal_mike

I think the parking charges that can be avoided if information is missing are the legally enforceable ones issued by councils (as opposed to invoices from private companies that have no statutory backing).

I think the big difference between your case and the parking case is that some people view the parking fine as an unfair stealth tax, so they think it fair to make the council play by all the rules in order to collect it. And as mije1983 said, the fine is usually completely disproportionate to any benefit the car owner gained from parking where they did.

In your case you will be willingly entering into a contract with the intention of getting significant benefit for free. I think this is significantly different to the parking situation (although I guess there may be people driving around looking for technicalities they can use when parking).

You are of course perfectly entitled to do this though, and the law may well be on your side. It would almost certainly need a small claim because I can't see the company just giving your money back, and there's a part of me that would be very interested to know how that claim went.

And at the very least it would bring to the attention of the company that they are committing an offence, if indeed they have failed to supply the required information.

jazmad

Fair point mije, that sentence in the guide is quite clear.

For the sake of the debate, I will clarify a few points:
- I've paraphrased the t&c in my original post, not copied them word for word nor will I be doing so
- when I paid and instructed the surveyor, they had not sent the t&c so I entered the contract with no thought of this scenario
- the surveyor booked the appointment via the estate agent and then told me. I think technically they need to tell me starting work early affects my cancellation rights which arguably was not done, specifically as they are doing the work within 7 to 14 days.

Frugal Mike - in the absence of other comments, I think I agree with you that this is technically possible. I wanted to consider this in case I had a genuine cause for complaint. Assuming everything goes fine, I'll just point out to the company they should check their t&c.

stevemLS

The civil law may be on your side.

The criminal law, on the other hand, perhaps provides that this may be fraud. You are setting out to obtain a service with no intention of paying for it.

waamo

Do you have a link to this surveyors website or is this (as I strongly suspect) a prank thread you've come up with during your school holiday?

timbstoke

To actually answer the question:

Strictly according to the legislation, you are correct that you could cancel for a full refund. However, there is one small problem: They already have your money, and they won't refund in that situation unless a court orders them to. So you'd have to go to court and explain that yes, the work is complete; yes, it's perfectly satisfactory, but you want a refund because they haven't told you about this bit of the CCRs which you already know about. And you would fail, with costs awarded against you, because the underlying point of the law is to be reasonable.

It's a useful one to get evidence of, so that if you need to take them to court because they didn't do a good job, you have a nice bit of additional legislation to back up your case, but you haven't found a magical bit of legislation that lets you get lots of free goods and services until companies update their T&Cs.