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Cancelling Estate Agent Contract - charges
djPM
Posts: 8 Forumite
Hi - looking for some advice please.
We are currently selling our house, we signed with an Estate Agent (A) on a Friday, however on the Monday we reviewing costs and decided to take an offer from another agent (B) with lower selling fees to save us nearly £2k. We called Agent A to say we were considering going elsewhere and if nothing can do with fees we'd be cancelling - they informed us there wasn't. So we signed with Agent B and issued our notice with A - this was on the Monday. So all well within the 14 day cooling off period.
Agent A have since hit us with a penalty charge of £1000 for the 'work' they did over 1.5 days. They haven't broken this down and to us the figure seems a bit 'finger in the air' - the only work we can see they did was to take photographs and make calls to database (to which 1 viewing was arranged). Advert was never published (or shouldn't have been) as we hadn't yet approved the brochure.
Has anyone come across this before? Any advice for us to dispute? :mad:
We are currently selling our house, we signed with an Estate Agent (A) on a Friday, however on the Monday we reviewing costs and decided to take an offer from another agent (B) with lower selling fees to save us nearly £2k. We called Agent A to say we were considering going elsewhere and if nothing can do with fees we'd be cancelling - they informed us there wasn't. So we signed with Agent B and issued our notice with A - this was on the Monday. So all well within the 14 day cooling off period.
Agent A have since hit us with a penalty charge of £1000 for the 'work' they did over 1.5 days. They haven't broken this down and to us the figure seems a bit 'finger in the air' - the only work we can see they did was to take photographs and make calls to database (to which 1 viewing was arranged). Advert was never published (or shouldn't have been) as we hadn't yet approved the brochure.
Has anyone come across this before? Any advice for us to dispute? :mad:
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Comments
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If memory serves, our EA gave us 2 options (and I think we may have had to sign a form to confirm which we were going for).
The options were:
1. You can have a cooling down period (probably 14 days I suspect) during which we will incur no costs or conduct no work ... so basically the house would not be listed
2. We will crack on right away but you will be liable for any reasonable costs incurred if you do cancel.
What does your paperwork say with (A) EA?0 -
Westminster wrote: »If memory serves, our EA gave us 2 options (and I think we may have had to sign a form to confirm which we were going for).
The options were:
1. You can have a cooling down period (probably 14 days I suspect) during which we will incur no costs or conduct no work ... so basically the house would not be listed
2. We will crack on right away but you will be liable for any reasonable costs incurred if you do cancel.
What does your paperwork say with (A) EA?
We did sign point 2 to start the work right away, but within 1.5 days I guess what we are disputing is would it really mount to £1000?
They are charging us for (my comments):
- photographs (the agent did them on own camera)
- floorplan (he didnt measure or draw anything and took my floorplan we got when brought the new build away (which he hasn't yet returned)
- preparing details (fair enough, they sent brochure to approve (which we didnt)
- full call around database by 5 members of staff (no idea if this happened, and by how many people)
- arranging 7 viewings, which were cancelled at last minute (we only got email notification for 1)
- internet advertising (no idea where and the cost for this - we hadnt approved brochure yet, so they shouldn't have advertised anything)0 -
It sounds like you agreed for them to commence work immediately, so yes, they can charge for what they've done.
It also sounds like an expensive invoice. If you are unhappy with it
* ask for an itemised breakdown of costs
* dispute the items you feel are unfair/excessive
It might be worth talking to EA (B) to see if they have an opinion on the costs - though they might be wary about getting involved.......0
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