HELP PLEASE for an elderly 80-year old lady

MattMattMattUK

kazwookie said:

May be a phone call to the local trading standards, to see if they have anything on this company.

Trading Standards do not deal with the public anymore, the complaint needs to be referred from a relevant organisation (Citizen's Advice for example).

user1977

MattMattMattUK said:

kazwookie said:

May be a phone call to the local trading standards, to see if they have anything on this company.

Trading Standards do not deal with the public anymore, the complaint needs to be referred from a relevant organisation (Citizen's Advice for example).

In any event, they're not going to start publicising who they've had complaints about.

MalMonroe

Doesn't this lady have any kind of receipt for the money she paid? Will it be recorded on her bank statement? Did she actually PAY the deposit?

Although Trading Standards is no more, the Consumer Credit Act covers this kind of thing, via Citizens Advice. as JJ_Egan has said. 

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/our-work/citizens-advice-consumer-work/the-consumer-rights-act-2015/

But in any case, this lady should tell her son. I mean, it's crazy that she's frightened of him!  Even if he may be 'cross' - he should be helping her with this, not (with the best will in the world and no offence meant) a stranger she met quite by accident.

As to her health, to be honest she probably did already have some high blood pressure issues but understandably this has exacerbated the whole thing. She does need to speak to her relatives and quickly.

She should NOT be willing to lose the deposit! And she can't be made to pay any more because she has signed nothing to that effect. 

Please do encourage her to get her son's help. I don't think that any organisations will be willing to help her through you (again, no offence meant).

If this is a dodgy company they need to be reported to Action Fraud in the first instance but as before, by her or one of her family members. Nine months is a long time for them to start getting to work on the conservatory. . .

VastiG

Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions, I am really grateful for your time!  I will have a look at the links and suggestions and see how far I get.
Kindest regards ...

CKhalvashi

I'm going to leave the medical aspects to one side as it's irrelevant to this, however I do feel it best that her son knows. If she were my parent, I'd want to know to be able to make arrangements within the family. This is a situation that is likely to cause stress, but nothing that can't be solved.

Sorry if it seemed I was calling her dodgy, this wasn't the overall intention. It simply strikes me as odd that a contract would be signed without financing in place.

On the conservatory issue, granted that Google is an easy-ish way to find this information in these circumstances, however I'm more concerned that the work doesn't seem to have been done in 9 months when the documentation shown seems to indicate (but not state explicitly) that it would be done sooner. If this is October, I'd assume it's reasonable that the work would be completed before the winter really starts to bite.

You have details for Age UK, and Citizens Advice for England can be contacted on 0800 144 8848. I don't feel it's unreasonable a company won't respond to you (I run a company although not in construction/maintenance, but wouldn't respond to a non-customer), however if you were to type a letter for her, she signs it and it gets posted, I don't feel it's reasonable to not respond to her as their customer.

If they're a Limited company (I haven't checked) and still trading, or you can track the person down who is the sole trader/partner it may be worth (after seeking advice from Age UK and CAB) her sending a Letter Before Action. We can help with this on this site, so please don't hesitate to come back if you need further help.

If they're going to pursue the claim for 90% of the unfinished work, an LBA followed by a court claim for the whole deposit against them will get the matter in front of a judge who can decide what is fair. A claim of this nature would cost £115 and it's a very simple procedure, so is worth pursuing, even if she gets nothing back (now more information is present I personally feel it's likely she'll get at least something) but a judge decides the unpaid part is unenforcable.

Please also note that my posts assume there are no signs of dementia present. If there are then the legal situation is somewhat different.

Grumpy_chap

I don't in any way wish to question the OP's genuine concern, but the OP and the little old lady are really just two random strangers:

VastiG said:

I met Diana the other week by chance as my husband was doing some renovation work at her neighbour's property.  

Simply just the OP's age does not make her vulnerable.  Though, current medical state may do so.:

VastiG said:

she is truly on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  

It is not clear as to why, if this deposit was paid September 2020, the work has not yet been done.  That is approaching a year now.  Is it even certain that this deposit was actually paid?

VastiG said:

she paid a deposit would suffice as proof of agreement? 
*  This all happened on the 14th of September 2020.

However, the little old lady has family who should really be her support network:

VastiG said:

her partner 

VastiG said:

She's even too scared to tell her son about it because she said he would be so annoyed with her.

I totally understand that the OP is well-meaning, but the best advice the OP can give to the lady is that she must seek the advice from her partner and her son first.  The son may be annoyed, but I guess he'll get to know sooner or later, and the son won't be any more supportive knowing that he comes second-fiddle to a random stranger.

For any medical factors, the OP should suggest the lady sees the GP, or other suitable first-line medical service.  

If the lady really cannot get support on the matter from her partner and son, then the next step would be a trusted (and long-established) friend or a local charity such as CAB.

I totally understand why the company is non-responsive to any contact from the OP - the company cannot simply go about sharing details with any random stranger by chance encounter.  Even if the company wished to (which I doubt), GDPR would prevent them from doing so.

In all of this process, the OP presumably, and correctly, has no knowledge about the lady and her financial position - she may well be loaded for all the OP knows.

The first rule of problem solving is to know whether it is your problem.  This, frankly is not the OP's problem.  The OP has been very caring and tried to support this lady, but the time now seems to be to direct the lady to her family support network or charities and then leave well alone.

My final thought is that the OP needs to be careful that this is not all a scam designed to draw the OP (and others) in.  In my experience, the more senior members of society tend to be more private than the young-ones, so the whole idea that the lady had a chance encounter and quickly steered the conversation to this problem about the conservatory roof and immediately sharing a copy of the contract seems odd:

VastiG said:

having a casual conversation the topic of her conservatory was discussed.  She proceeded to tell me how she received a visit from one of the salesperson/designer from a company, who suggested to her that making changes to her conservatory would be of benefit to her in the winter and summer as her current conservatory wasn't properly insulated.  I have the contract with me and even though she admits having the discussion with him and paying him a deposit of £2,530, she is in an absolute state knowing that she has a balance of £7,773.00 still outstanding.  No work has yet been done on the conservatory, but she is an 80-year old lady who truly is a nervous wreck right now.  She said she felt overwhelmed when the chap spoke to her and felt under pressure to agree to the sale.  

Now, this could be the total genuine situation that the lady is so overwhelmed by this that she just blurted out to anyone who'd listen (but not her son, apparently).

It is also possible that this is a confidence trick and the OP is now hooked and at some future point will feel obligated to pay the deposit back to the little old lady...

elsien

kazwookie said:

What does the contract say about cancelling the contract.

I strongly suggest she pays out NO more money what so ever

Does she have family who have power over health and wealth?

Doesn’t matter if she does. If she has capacity she is still able to make her own decisions regardless of the LPA. Even ones she then comes to regret. 

Ditto informing her son about the alleged overdose. Regardless of what anyone else thinks is best for her, this is her decision to make. 

It does seem very odd that all this decision making and sorting out has been handed to a random stranger met by chance, 

Grumpy_chap

The other "bad outcome" on this for the OP would be that funds go missing from this vulnerable old lady and the OP ends up being accused of wrongdoing.  It does not matter that this is never the sort of thing the OP would be involved with, if this vulnerable old lady is sharing all this information with the OP as a random stranger, what else if the vulnerable old lady sharing with who else that may not have the same moral standards as the OP?  It just needs one random stranger to be a "wrong-un" and the OP risks being guilty by association, even if there is none.

bris

Copy and paste, looks like another wind up,