Am I able to cancel my "custom made order" even though i haven't received it yet.

I placed an order for wardrobes with Made.com in January on the internet. They claim that these are custom made wardrobes but they are a standard size that they sell on there website. 
There policy states;
CUSTOM MADE PRODUCT POLICY

Custom MADE Cancellations

With our Custom MADE products, your 14 days to cancel starts from the date you place your order. Each Custom MADE piece is bespoke, so if you cancel after 14 days, you'll still be charged the full price. This doesn't affect your statutory legal rights.

I haven't even received the item yet and not due too until May. Do distance selling rules apply here?

Comments

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0
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    edited 3 April 2020 at 5:09PM
    What country are these supposed to be made in.. Do the website state if they are manufactured in house or not? The length of time you have waited suggests maybe they are made by a 3rd party and quite possibly overseas and due to the current situation might well have been put on the back burner and not even the company are upto date with notifying customers. I don't really know much about the website but surely they must have small print regarding delivery times and further details. 
  • Hasbeen
    Hasbeen Posts: 4,404
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    ben4btb said:
    I placed an order for wardrobes with Made.com in January on the internet. They claim that these are custom made wardrobes but they are a standard size that they sell on there website. 
    There policy states;
    CUSTOM MADE PRODUCT POLICY

    Custom MADE Cancellations

    With our Custom MADE products, your 14 days to cancel starts from the date you place your order. Each Custom MADE piece is bespoke, so if you cancel after 14 days, you'll still be charged the full price. This doesn't affect your statutory legal rights.

    I haven't even received the item yet and not due too until May. Do distance selling rules apply here?

    As far as I am aware the Distant Selling Regulations do not include personalised items.

    What have you agreed to in the contract/order?
    The world is not ruined by the wickedness of the wicked, but by the weakness of the good. Napoleon
  • unholyangel
    unholyangel Posts: 16,863
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    Custom made is not an exemption from the right to cancel. The wording is:
    "goods made to the consumer's specification or clearly personalised". 

    The wardrobes were not made to your specifications. They were made to your choice of their own specifications. The fact the goods are made following an order being made does not make them exempt from the regulations. See BIS's implementing guidance for the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation & Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 - which replaced the distance selling regulations in 2014.

    In particular, this paragraph
    14. An item made up following a consumer order does not necessarily make it a bespoke item which is exempt from cancellation rights. An item, for example a sofa or computer, can be assembled following an order but the component parts may be made up of parts offered from a standard range. So, for instance, a sofa where the consumer chooses a fabric and colour from a range on offer will not be bespoke for the purposes of these Regulations. However, if the consumer asks the trader to source a special finish and which is not in the range generally offered by the trader, that is likely to be a bespoke item.


    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
  • tacpot12
    tacpot12 Posts: 7,894
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    edited 3 April 2020 at 5:37PM
    The Consumer Contracts Regulations seem to apply to your purchase except that they don't apply to custom made items.  As you have identified, your ability to cancel turns on whether the wardrobes are custom made or not. 

    I had a good look through the Made.COM website and I would say that it is quite difficult to know whether an item is custom made or not, except that everything that is custom made appears to have a name that begins with "Custom MADE". Therefore if the items you purchased do not have these words in their name OR the pre-sales material you were sent via email does not otherwise confirm that the items you ordered are custom made, I don't see how they can now claim that they custom made. 

    However, their T&Cs do have an errors and omissions provisions - sections 8.2 and 8.3. I cannot see that these are reasonable terms if they result in you being unaware that you are buying custom made items and have different rights to cancel. I would hope that a judge would agree that these provisions are unreasonable if they bind you to something that you are not aware of. 

    In case you need to go to court, I would use the search facility on the MADE.com website and search for the word "Custom" and print all the results as a PDF. I would also do the same with the current T&Cs if they are the ones you with to go to court with. 

    To be fair to the manufacturer, you might like to reflect on the question whether if you had known that the wardrobes were being made as custom items and that you only had 14 days to cancel, would you have cancelled within 14 days?
    The comments I post are my personal opinion. While I try to check everything is correct before posting, I can and do make mistakes, so always try to check official information sources before relying on my posts.
  • shaun_from_Africa
    shaun_from_Africa Posts: 12,858
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    tacpot12 said:
    The Consumer Contracts Regulations seem to apply to your purchase except that they don't apply to custom made items. 
    Yes they do.
    If I order a table and that table is manufactured especially for my order and I chose it from a list of sizes shown on a website, it is a custom made item but not a personalised one so the right of cancellation should apply.

    If however I chose that table from a list and asked the manufacturer to paint it a specific colour that was not given as an option, it then becomes a custom made and personalised item and the right of cancellation and return no longer applies.
  • tacpot12
    tacpot12 Posts: 7,894
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    Apologies to the OP, shaun_from_Africa is correct. The relevant section in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 is 28 (1) (b), which says "the supply of goods that are made to the consumer’s specifications or are clearly personalised;"

    These goods were not made to your specification, they were made to the manufacturer's specifications, and they were not clearly personalised. So even if the goods were marketed as Custom Made, you still have the right to cancel. 



    The comments I post are my personal opinion. While I try to check everything is correct before posting, I can and do make mistakes, so always try to check official information sources before relying on my posts.
  • DoaM
    DoaM Posts: 11,863
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    Custom made simply means Made to order. As per above, yes you do have the right to cancel.
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