Seller breach of contract - Fixtures and Fittings

FTB2021HELP

Hi all, looking for some constructive advice please. 

We had an offer accepted in May 2021, completed early November 2021 and moved into the house late November 2021. 

In early December I noticed that the sellers had swapped both of the expensive (£700+ each at least) neff electric ovens out with cheap (£189 each) bush fan ovens. There are two ovens in the kitchen. 

On the agents listing description the ovens were listed as electric ovens, there are 4 photos out of the 24 on the listing which show off the ovens and the ovens were also highlighted to us as being really good ovens on the viewing. 

On the fixtures and fittings form signed 20 days after the offer was accepted the ovens are ticked as ‘fitted’ and ‘included’ with no comment regarding the intention for the ones we saw to be swapped out. 

I contacted my solicitor in December and he said they have breached their contract and contacted their solicitor who passed this to the sellers. The sellers said they had told the estate agent that they were taking them. At no time was this communicated to us, the buyers. 

The sellers have instructed their solicitor to pass no further correspondence to them regarding this issue. My solicitor replied stating that they have still breached their contract. 

I would like to take the sellers to small claims court myself without a solicitor as I think we have a case for claiming. However, we have no forwarding address or contact details for the sellers and I have read that you should do your best to contact the defendant before pursuing small claims. The only address I have is their registered office from companies house (accountants address) as well as a possible home address. 

The sellers also listed a greenhouse on the fixtures and fittings list which was not left. Apparently this got damaged in a storm so they removed it. However they left their kitchen bins in the garden for us to dispose of so I do not believe their explanation and think this example may help our case. 

Does anybody have experience with this? I’m unsure as to the next steps that we should be taking. All constructive advice is welcomed and I hope that my post will go on to help others that may find themselves in this position. 

Thank you

[Deleted User]

Your solicitor is best placed to advise if you can take them to SCC and have a reasonable chance of winning.

If it doesn't specify the brand on the contract you might have a hard time arguing it. As for the greenhouse, they should have informed you and replaced it, so your odds are a bit better there.

FTB2021HELP

[Deleted User] said:

Your solicitor is best placed to advise if you can take them to SCC and have a reasonable chance of winning.

If it doesn't specify the brand on the contract you might have a hard time arguing it. As for the greenhouse, they should have informed you and replaced it, so your odds are a bit better there.

Thank you for your response. I am under the impression that as we saw the original ovens, there’s pictures of them and they were highlighted as a selling point, when receiving the fixtures and fittings list it would be reasonable to believe that the ovens we physically saw were staying, as nothing was ever communicated in dispute of this… even if the oven brand was not named on the form. 

Schwarzwald

Are you sure their address is not stated in any of the correspondence, emails between solicitors, potentially old building regs applications, etc?
have you tried googling them, used scrapping website like rocketreach or similar to find their email addresses, etc?

i only went through the process twice now but the vendor’s address was always noted somewhere between the lines.

FTB2021HELP

Schwarzwald said:

Are you sure their address is not stated in any of the correspondence, emails between solicitors, potentially old building regs applications, etc?
have you tried googling them, used scrapping website like rocketreach or similar to find their email addresses, etc?

i only went through the process twice now but the vendor’s address was always noted somewhere between the lines.

Thank you for your reply. I am pretty sure that I do have their new address, but not 100%, so I was going to wait a bit until land registry updated and send all correspondence through recorded delivery. 

I have thought about email but it would be easy for them to say they never received an email due to the correspondence going to junk. 

Borisbearworrier

Hi

We had to contact our vendors about something and we wrote a letter to our address and they received it via their redirected mail. Not sure if this will work for you but we got a response.

Slithery

FTB2021HELP said:
Thank you for your reply. I am pretty sure that I do have their new address, but not 100%, so I was going to wait a bit until land registry updated and send all correspondence through recorded delivery.

LR currently have a massive backlog. It will probably be at least another year before the registry is updated with the details of your vendors purchase.
Also it's best not to use recorded delivery as the recipient can just refuse to sign for it and then it legally hasn't been delivered. If you just send 2 copies from different post offices and get 'proof of posting' (which is free) then the letter is legally deemed to be served 3 days later, without the the recipient having to sign.

lookstraightahead

Was the cooker new? A second hand cooker isn't worth a lot and I presume (although I don't know for sure) that you could only claim like for like, not new for old.

What make and kind of greenhouse? How old is it? How big is it? How will you claim for it? 

p00hsticks

FTB2021HELP said:

[Deleted User] said:

Your solicitor is best placed to advise if you can take them to SCC and have a reasonable chance of winning.

If it doesn't specify the brand on the contract you might have a hard time arguing it. As for the greenhouse, they should have informed you and replaced it, so your odds are a bit better there.

Thank you for your response. I am under the impression that as we saw the original ovens, there’s pictures of them and they were highlighted as a selling point, when receiving the fixtures and fittings list it would be reasonable to believe that the ovens we physically saw were staying, as nothing was ever communicated in dispute of this… even if the oven brand was not named on the form. 

One reason why it;s always worth having another viewing immediately prior to exchange - if the original ovens and greenhouse were still in place at that point then you;d have a stronger case...

andy444

With all respect, what do you actually want to achieve by taking them to a small claims court? Do you want the newer ovens put back into the house? Do you want some kind of financial reimbursement?

The whole issue of leaving fixtures and fittings is largely based on trust. Whilst they may have technically breached the contract, is it really worth the aggro of taking action against them?

UnderOffer

I know it’s a little cheeky of them, but would you still pursue if they’d lied and said the replacement ovens were because the Neff broke before exchange? They were honest but they could have just said it packed up and they replaced with a new working oven.