Claiming against a company for annual leave used for visits

jam1eg

Hi all


I wonder if someone can help.


I got some new windows install by the most incompetent company I've ever used, I've had to take twelve days of annual leave off so Everest can resolve issues that were left from the installation day, this has been in a year and a half period, we paid 12k for windows and doors and we've had engineers come out and resolve one issue and create others let alone leaving broken glass in our property when there wasn't any broken glass around.


My question is can I take Everest to the claims court to claim back a nominal amount against those days taken away from my family where we've been unable to spend time together due to these days wasted. I'm claiming £2500 from them, I've been having email discussions with them for some time regarding this claim and been messed about further.


We've had a door that has dropped and broken hinge covers five times only when I forced them to look at the cause of the issue did this get resolved. This whole saga has been really poor.


Can someone please help? and thanks in advance.

boo_star

You can take them to court, yes.

Whether you!!!8217;d win and be awarded what you!!!8217;re asking for is a different matter.

£200 per day isn!!!8217;t a huge amount, but could you have mitigated this by working from home etc?

I also think that taking paid time off might work against you.

jam1eg

Cheers - I was unable to work from home, however I did work from home on one of the days where I didn't have meetings. Working from home in my company was frowned upon.


Yes that's the exact reason I'm posting the question, because I took paid time off work and I'm not at a financial loss, I've just been unable to spend quality time with my family as I've used up my annual leave and unable to use it with my wife and family going out for days, we only have one car so this has had quite an impact.

pramsay13

It will be very difficult for you to quantify your loss as you've been paid for your annual leave but chosen to spend it sorting out the issues with the windows.
In one sense would have been better if you had taken unpaid leave to deal with it as then you would have a quantifiable loss.

jam1eg

Cheers - I wouldn't say I chose to spend it sorting the issues. Can't afford to take unpaid leave this would have been hard hitting.

mattyprice4004

You wouldn't put it that way, but that's how it is on paper - you had the choice to take leave with pay, or without pay. You chose with pay, so it'll be harder to make your case.

I'd go from the angle of the cost of 12 days of unpaid leave that you'll have to take, to be in the same position as you were originally.

unholyangel

There needs to be a loss that can be quantified, but you don't need to actually lose money to have suffered a loss.

Annual leave can be quantified so could potentially be a loss. However, whether its recoverable or not will depend on the other rules around damages - for example whether you could have taken any steps to reasonably mitigate your loss (perhaps by organising it for your day off, asking someone else to sit in, taking a half day instead of a full day or arranging to work another day), whether you have taken any unreasonable steps to increase your loss and whether those losses were foreseeable.

jam1eg

Cheers - so is this a waste of time as it's high risk as to whether this will go my way? what's your thoughts.

I feel obviously with feeling about the issue because I've forked out 12k for some sh*t, I should have paid 4-5k and expected this level of service and probably got way way better for a local company.

Aylesbury_Duck

I'm sure you have overpaid. I don't know anyone who's paid more for windows from a local firm than from the national chains, the local firms have always cost much less. In my last house I made the mistake of getting Anglian to quote to replace all the windows and they were 80% more expensive than the local company that actually did the job in the end, even after all the daft sales tactics they employ. I expect you're right that a local company would have been perhaps as much as half the price of Everest.

I can't see that you're going to get anywhere claiming for taking leave but you might be able to get a gesture of goodwill out of them.

Gavin83

I'm assuming you earn £200 a day, so £4Kish a month after tax?

I think you do potentially have a claim, although you'd need evidence you mitigated your losses. For example if your wife earned less than you they'd question why she couldn't have taken the leave instead. They'd also have to be negligent for all the issues you took time off for.

steampowered

I don't think there is any case law specifically on how loss of annual leave is to be quantified.

Depending on the attitude of the judge you could either get nothing because you can't prove a financial loss; or you get the value of the leave (either on the basis that you would have to take unpaid leave to put you in the position you should be in, or on the basis that the lost annual leave has an 'amenity value'). I think the latter is more likely.

If the defendant wants to claim you failed to mitigate your loss, the burden of proof is on them to prove that. I don't see how they could prove that you could have worked from home or anything like that.

So yes, if their breach of contract forced you to take unnecessary annual leave, I would absolutely include that in your claim.

You should say in your particulars of claim how the amount is calculated. If you are employed full-time, I would divide your annual salary by 260 (being approximately the number of working days in a year) to get a value for each day of annual leave.