The Learning College - where do I stand?

Maffoo66

Greetings all,

This is my first time posting so I'm going to jump straight to the point - I need some help.

Back in February after a break up I moved bank to my parents house and needed to find a job. I was called by a recruitment agency saying they could put me on a BTEC course in being a teaching assistant with a garunteed employment position while learning for £325, I just had to pay a £75 deposit and then could engage in a payment plan as I was unemployed at that moment in time. So seeing it as an opportunity I paid out the deposit and awaited course materials. I explained I had recently moved house a few days before so the materials needed to be delivered to a different address to my billing details as I hadn't yet updated my card.

Nothing arrived and I decided to cancel the course a few days later, as on thought it wasn't as good as it seemed contacted the learning college to cancel my place and get my money back.

Upon calling them I was informed that it was day 7 of the 7 day cancellation but they may be able to make an exception if I posted the materials back to them - but I wouldn't get my money back. Upon explaining that I hadn't received them it turned out that despite my instruction they were sent to my ex girlfriends house.

I explained my situation and they wouldn't budge. I explained that I had instructed otherwise and that I couldn't go back there, but still no budging. I entered into a large dispute with them and heard nothing.

Until they took £100 from me on October 1st with no notification, invoice or instruction from myself - 8 months after I had cancelled my place.

Fortunately my bank refunded the money (and the payment from 31st March which I missed) and are now investigating it.

So, with back story explained - where do I stand, or what can I do?

I've signed no Direct Debit mandates, no contracts and no agreements. I've verbally agreed to nothing as I wanted to cancel my place, the closest I came to was setting up a payment plan but nobody got back to me - so I gave no permissions.

The learning college are claiming that somebody signed for the course materials at the old address on my behalf, but as that wasn't me and the wrong address from what I gave them. As far as I'm aware that's someone signing to receive a package, no contract notes....and if that does count, well, it wasn't me. (i work in pension administration, we wouldn't accept an application signed by anyone else except the client)

The bank agreed that this was unauthorized as the payments were taken at random intervals and not even at set amounts of money (£50 on 31st March and £100 on 1st October) .

So all, what are your opinions? Is there anything I can do about this? I'm pretty sure that as I've signed nothing, haven't heard from any debt collection agencies (i updated my address) and said I want to cancel writhing the allotted time period that they're in the wrong.

Thank you in advance

bris

A contract exists, it doesn't have to be written, verbal and actions also form a contract. The fact you paid a deposit and gave them you card details are actions that formed the contract so you need to accept firstly that the contract exists.


You need to focus on the cancellation and address issue and whether you can prove you cancelled on time. This is what you need to argue.

Maffoo66

Thanks for replying bris.

Going through my emails I have found the dispute is open, and the learning college openly day they delivered it to the old address. They won't clarify who signed for it though.

I have the learner agreement and direct debit agreement emails that ask me to sign them and send them back, although I never did such a thing in the knowledge that I wanted to cancel and had already voiced this to them.

So would you say that the main area to concentrate on would be my cancellation and the course material being sent to the wrong address - effectively not receiving the product, due to an admin fault on their end?