Excessive Cancellation Charges ?

pinky1978

Having had to cancel a double glazing contract I asked Anglian Windows for a breakdown of their cancellation charges and this was what their Legal Department said -

 "We write in respect of the above Contracts and further to your emails to Bryan Tomlin requestinga detailed breakdown of our costs incurred under the Contractual cancellation clauses.

Window & Door Contract

As you are aware, in accordance with Clause 9(b) of our Contractual terms, which by signing the
Contract, you have agreed to have read and understood, following your request to cancel the
Contract, we are at liberty to charge 20% of the total Contract price which represents the losses
and expenses incurred by the company prior to cancellation.
With regard to your request for a breakdown of our expenses, we are not at liberty to provide you
with an itemised monetary breakdown as this is commercially sensitive information. However,
we confirm these are in respect of the Sales/Management Commissions, Survey and
Administration expenses incurred to date. Therefore, we are at liberty to retain the sum of

£2,409.28 and refund you the sum of £602.32 accordingly"

Why is telling me what their Cancellation charges are for Commercially Sensitive Information?

How can they say that the vast majority of it (2409.28 - 553.03 = 1876.25) is for Sales/Management Commisions when the salesman would not get paid the commission if the sale didn't complete ?

What is Management Commision, does the salemans manager get paid commission on his sale as well ?

Any help anyone could give me would be very gratefully received.

Many Thanks

Okell

I presume it is, but can you confirm whether this is either (1) a "distance contrcat" or (2) an "off premises contract" as opposed to an "on premises" contrcat?

(See definitions here:  The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 (legislation.gov.uk)  )

pinkshoes

At what point did you cancel and what cancellation information were you provided with when you signed the contract?

pinky1978

Okell said:

I presume it is, but can you confirm whether this is either (1) a "distance contrcat" or (2) an "off premises contract" as opposed to an "on premises" contrcat?

(See definitions here:  The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 (legislation.gov.uk)  )

Thank you.

I wasn't given the option to sign anything whilst the Salesman was at the house but had to sign it electronically when they sent me the email link.

pinky1978

pinkshoes said:

At what point did you cancel and what cancellation information were you provided with when you signed the contract?

The Salesman did not tell me anything about the cancellation policy.  At no point during the salesmans visit did he tell me that the cooling off period was 7 days nor did he tell me how much it would be. Nothing was signed whilst he was there as everything is done electronically. This is the first time I have ever had to do that and wasn't quite sure what I was clicking on but I think I just clicked on a link and that meant that the contract had been signed. When I spoke to head of cancellations yesterday he just kept saying that when I "signed" the form I was agreeing that I had read the (10 pages) of Terms and Conditions and it didn't matter if the Salesman had told me or not. The salesman told me nothing but there is also a Contract Declaration Customer Questions form where I have allegedly been told all about the cancellation rights, code of pratice etc etc. These have all been selected yes but I was never told anything about any of these things and I most certainly did not click anything on his laptop. He then went on to say that no Court in the land would be interested in any claim as I should have read all the T&C's. In hindsight I obviously realise that we should all read the T&C's but I'm sure that many of you are like me and when it comes to buying anything and we can't proceed unless we tick the box to say we have read them we all just do it. The Anglian ones are also very long winded and you don't even get to the Notice of Right To Cancel until the last page and it then needs to be done via email. What happens if people don't have a computer which a lot of older people don't ? How do they sign the forms or cancel the contract ?

pinky1978

I cancelled 21 days after I had signed the contract electronically. As it was the first time I had signed something on line I can't remember if I was taken straight to the area to "sign" when I clicked on the link or if it brought up the terms and conditions first. I don't think it did so I didn't actually read them until anglian said they wanted all that money as  a cancellation fee.

pinky1978

How can they charge for commission when no commission would be paid if the contract was cancelled ?

RefluentBeans

pinky1978 said:

How can they charge for commission when no commission would be paid if the contract was cancelled ?

They haven’t specifically said they charged commission. Their wording was ‘ Sales/Management Commissions, Survey and
Administration’ which likely includes the survey of your house. 

I think it comes down to what they’ve already started to do. You can ask to appeal the fees, but if they’ve already started to make the windows or the PVC frames or not. If they have I can see why the costs are higher. 

tightauldgit

pinky1978 said:

How can they charge for commission when no commission would be paid if the contract was cancelled ?

They refused to provide you a breakdown of the costs so you don't really know what you have been charged or not charged for, nor do you know what contractual obligations they have to their employees. 

You really did need to read the terms of the contract before you signed them, it's no argument in court to say 'nobody reads contracts'. 

If they are refusing to budge then your only real option would be to take them to court and get them to justify the cancellation charges but you have to judge whether it's worthwhile. 

bris

RefluentBeans said:

pinky1978 said:

How can they charge for commission when no commission would be paid if the contract was cancelled ?

They haven’t specifically said they charged commission. Their wording was ‘ Sales/Management Commissions, Survey and
Administration’ which likely includes the survey of your house. 

I think it comes down to what they’ve already started to do. You can ask to appeal the fees, but if they’ve already started to make the windows or the PVC frames or not. If they have I can see why the costs are higher. 

21 days seems like it's outside the 14 day window, read the contract to see what it says, so on a legally binding contract they can claim for all their losses, that being commission, survey fees and loss of profit

Contracts done correctly are pretty much bullet proof..

It doesn't really matter whether they have made the windows or not its all about what they would have made  if the contract was completed.
 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

bris said:
 on a legally binding contract they can claim for all their losses, that being commission, survey fees and loss of profit

 

The ordinary position is that where one party breaches the contract the other may claim either costs or loss of profit (otherwise both would be the full amount) and either must be mitigated which for profit means attempting to find another customer. 

They appear to recognise the correct position, it's merely a question of what their costs actually are. 

As above OP if you wish to challenge the costs you need to send a letter before action and then consider small claims, I doubt their "commercially sensitive information" concerns will prevent the court from requesting they demonstrate their costs but whether they can padded them out or what view the court will take on any costs they attempt to justify no one here can say.

A letter before action won't cost anything, filing fees for small claims are detailed here:

https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/court-fees

They obviously have some costs and it's hard to pin a figure on what their costs should be so I don't know what amount you'd seek, realistically you'd hope a bit of resistance would push them to give you a better offer and you'd have live with writing off the rest