Consumer rights for fitted furniture in the home

sflow

We decided to upgrade a home office and used Hammonds to supply and fit the new furniture. We were duped into signing the contract by the surveyor who promised the furniture could be installed in the colours we had selected. We felt the design documents were not detailed and were promised we would receive all the details overnight - it never arrived. All attempt to call, email and phone Hammonds went unanswered beyond the 14 day cooling off period. We kept getting automated emails saying the install would take 6 days and finally 3.5 days.

We finally get a call the day before fitting and the customer agent tells us to speak to the fitter the next day wrt to all points. The fitter arrived with an incomplete pack of furniture, howver said nothing. When the 4 days was over, he then told us he had not received all the missing parts, the installation would be incomoplete - takes up to 30 days for them to come back.

We called and emailed daily - no response. I left the country to attend my mother's funeral, and during this time Hammonds wrote giving less than 48 hours notice they would be coming to fit - what excatly we did not know. We had to cancel because of work and funeral. They could not send anyone for another 30 days. Our house was in disarray, all the contents of the home study ( almost 3.5m by 3.5m and very full before Hammonds arrived) was all over various rooms in the house. We asked for a full schedule of remedial works ahead of their arrival - they did not respond. The remdial fitter arrived 4 days before Christmas - had no idea what works were outstanding, did not complete the works. Still no clear communication on when they would complete, the furniture supplied was not the colour we had chosen, but as we worked from home since covid, we just desperately needed the home office and home sorted, and kids had major exam years. The installation quality was terrible.

Given we made no progress with Hammonds over nearly two months, we decided to reject the furniture and we desperately wanted our home and office back, and some normality at home. I became very ill as a result with stress as I was unable to work and it was impacting our earnings. We had purchased (luckily) on a zero deposit credir agreement with Novuna. Novuna took several weeks to decide we could reject, then it was stalemate with Hammonds. They took their own sweet time and argued over trivia to save themselves a few pounds despite our repeated requests to remove as soon as possible. They were trying to force us to accept badly fitted furnoture thatwas not to agreed specification.

We incurred huge loss of family earnings, could not pay off a chunk of our home mortgage before our mortgage rates went up hence now paying massive amounts on our mortgage and incurred large recuperation costs for family who could not recuperate at our home te day after Hammonds had promised to complete the installation. In all it took 7 months to get rid of them despite us having rejected the goods in order to regain full possession of our family, home and work as quickly as possible. The Hammonds fitter told us not to use the study before it was completely signed off as he said other customers had got into further dispute with Hammonds as a result. 

What can we reasonably claim for? We never bargained not being able to use an entire room in the house which was crucial for our family earnings for so long plus the complete disarray to our family for so long caused huge amount of stress. It took a full year from start to finish to get ourselves sorted from the day we made the fateful decision to sign the Hammonds contract.

Please anyone with some experience on this please advise. Ive read as much as I can but I cannot find anything specific to what is considered reasonable damage for a supplier taking so long to remedy a bad situation of their own making.

pinkshoes

You can claim for quantifiable losses due to their incompetence. 

So a full refund for the cost of the furniture and they should also take it away at their cost and make good the room. As they're so slow at responding you could offer to pay someone to do this and claim the cost.

I don't get the mortgage bit and how that's relevant to whether the furniture got built or not as surely you earmarked £XXXX for this so that money was never for paying off the mortgage.

Okell

@sflow -  I can't quite follow what's happened.

You say that Novuna agreed that you could reject the furniture, do you mean you've got your money back?

And when you say it took 7 months to get rid off Hammonds, had they made good the room?

You haven't explained what you want to claim for.

And why did it mean that you lost a lot of family income by not being able to work from home.  Couldn't you return to whaere you worked before Covid.  Are you self-emplyed and can only work from home?

You need to provide relevant details and explanations

Aylesbury_Duck

If you've had a full refund, that's all you're entitled to, unless you can prove other reasonable costs incurred.  Not using the money to pay off your mortgage when rates were lower is not a legitimate claim.  If you have medical evidence, provided by your GP, that you were unable to work because of stress that was directly related to the situation, you will need to show it.

What are "recuperation costs"?  We are only talking about one room being out of action for a few months, aren't we?  You weren't displaced from the house, as some people are in the event of fire or flood, for example?

RefluentBeans

Yeah I have to agree I’m afraid. It sounds like you have received the money back (from the credit company?). You won’t also be able to claim from the merchant if you have already claimed from via the credit company. If you haven’t had a refund yet, then that is of course a different matter.

As for the rest of it - I appreciate it’s not ideal your mortgage rates going up; but I don’t think you are going to have much luck for that. Why couldn’t you have worked elsewhere in the house? If the house was in such a disarray and you couldn’t conduct your business at all, why didn’t you find an office space to rent? That could, arguably, be a claimable expense from the merchant. If you couldn’t conduct your business at all, then you will be hard pressed to find a judge to agree to pay speculative earnings, let alone future mortgage repayments! 

The claims of stress may have some traction, assuming you involved medical professionals at the time. But you need to be realistic on what you can claim for. The same speculative claims issue as above applies here. Easy to say you missed X days of work paid at £Y so you are owed £X.Y - but it sounds like you’re self employed and this is harder to quantify the work. 

Also worth pointing out, that if this was a home office in which you conducted business, you aren’t entitled to the same consumer protections. Home offices are a bit of a gray array, even more so now post Covid - where the home office was effectively a study before, it’s not uncommon that these places can now be for, primarily, business. If this got to court, this would certainly be my defence. 

sflow

Yes since covid my place of work ended up being mostly at home - not by choice - hence the upgrade of the home office. One room was not usable the home study - however the contents were distributed across several rooms of the house. Imagine emptying your kitchen for a few days whilst a new kitchen is put in, and then finding you are unable to use your kitchen at all for 7 months. And we spend far more time in our home office than the kitchen. We were unable to work elsewhere as we rely on routers, paperwork and servers etc that had been installed in the home office to enable us to work from home during covid. The whole point of taking the Section 75 rejection of goods is because we felt that it would be quicker route to regaining access to out home office/home and the whole process was so painful that given the scale of issues we had with the quality of installation and the dimal response we were getting from them, it would have taken months and years of ( and off) our lives to work it through to a statisfactory finish. And for what we paid, we expected nothing less than the A1 standard they promised on their website pitch.

born_again

You are aware that S75 will at best get your money back & nothing else. Novuna will do nothing to clear the room or sort out new units & fitters.

Okell

But how did you lose income as a result of this disruption?

If you are employed, are you saying your employer didn't pay you because you couldn't work?  

Couldn't your employer have provided alternative office accommodation?

If you are self-employed it gets more complicated.  You wouldn't be a consumer and it could be argued that you should have some sort of business interruption insurance to cover this sort of situation.

You still haven't provided any relevant or useful information; you still haven't confirmed whether or not you got a full refund from the finance provider; you havene't confirmed if Hammonds made the room good; you still haven't expleined what you would be claiming for...

Aylesbury_Duck

sflow said:

Yes since covid my place of work ended up being mostly at home - not by choice - hence the upgrade of the home office. One room was not usable the home study - however the contents were distributed across several rooms of the house. Imagine emptying your kitchen for a few days whilst a new kitchen is put in, and then finding you are unable to use your kitchen at all for 7 months. And we spend far more time in our home office than the kitchen. We were unable to work elsewhere as we rely on routers, paperwork and servers etc that had been installed in the home office to enable us to work from home during covid. The whole point of taking the Section 75 rejection of goods is because we felt that it would be quicker route to regaining access to out home office/home and the whole process was so painful that given the scale of issues we had with the quality of installation and the dimal response we were getting from them, it would have taken months and years of ( and off) our lives to work it through to a statisfactory finish. And for what we paid, we expected nothing less than the A1 standard they promised on their website pitch.

That's all very well, but to get the advice you need, you need to provide relevant details, not a descriptive tale of what happened, hypothetical kitchens and what-ifs.

Have you had a full refund from the credit provider?

Has the furniture been taken away and the room restored to useable state?

What measurable and quantifiable  losses have you suffered?  Having to move things around other rooms is nothing more than an inconvenience.  Not using the money to pay off your mortgage when rates were lower is not a legitimate claim.  If you have medical evidence provided by your GP showing that you were unable to work and therefore lost earnings because of stress that was directly related to the situation, there is an opportunity for compensation there.  Do you have that?

What are the "recuperation costs" you mention?  We are only talking about one room being out of action for a few months, aren't we?  You weren't displaced from the house, as some people are in the event of fire or flood, for example?

What would you be happy with, by way of compensation?  Have you got a figure in mind?

born_again

 We were unable to work elsewhere as we rely on routers, paperwork and servers etc that had been installed in the home office 

Why?
My router is over front door, have previously had a server installed in loft. Cat5/6 cable connecting them all together run under floors. Location of these make no difference on a room you work in.

Daughter works in the bedroom, furthest room away. All hard wired connections.

I would have said do you have legal cover on your home insurance, but wonder if they are aware of the working from home?

sflow

Thank you for your suggestions, we have now located a solictor who is happy to provide some advise.