Breach of contract? None installation

peteuk

Hi,

Just wondering where I stand with a furniture company who were meant to be fitting bespoke wardrobes today but who haven’t turned up.

Fitting was originally yesturday, however within two days of agreeing this date (over a month ago) they pushed it back to today.  24 hr delay, understandable.

Today we were given an 8am until 10am for the installation to start, also told it was a one day fitting.

Customer service is closed on a weekend, I’ve spoken to one of the local branches who are trying to escalate and work out what’s happening…but nothing.

Any thoughts?

Grumpy_chap

I suspect the error is in the pushed back installation moving from Friday to Saturday and "today" should actually always have been Monday coming.
Do the Fitters work on a Saturday?  It is quite common that they do not.
If the Fitters arrive on Monday, will you be able to accommodate that?

Consumer Rights with regard to late supply is a bit messy at times as very rarely is time "of the essence" so Consumer contracts all come down to "reasonable" interpretations.

peteuk

Grumpy_chap said:

I suspect the error is in the pushed back installation moving from Friday to Saturday and "today" should actually always have been Monday coming.
Do the Fitters work on a Saturday?  It is quite common that they do not.

This was one of my first questions - the answer is yes they do but not as a normal activity (hence no support)

This was escalated to the CEO’s office on Saturday and I spoke to someone from the office and then the head of installations.  It took 4-5 hours to locate my furniture.  At which point I realised it wasn’t being fitted on Saturday.

The change in fitting date from Friday to Saturday would have required a managers sign off.  It wasn’t an issue as it was rearranged over a month ago.  The furniture would have required picking up Friday (but wasn’t) so for me they knew there installation wasn’t happening Friday.  Distribution centre is closed Saturday.  Installer can’t be contacted…still.

So when I had the CEO office on the phone I suggested they either extend their level of support to include the weekend or don’t install at all on the weekend.  This may loose them some customers (eg those that can only install on a weekend)  but that’s a risk they need to calculate.  I corrected them several times as I did not request a weekend installation, and the change of installation wasn’t last week.

Today they have rearranged the appointment, reduced the price by 23% and will advise me where it is likely that this has gone wrong.  But the bottom line is they changed it to a Saturday, they had no support for me as a customer on a Saturday, getting basic info on a Saturday was a challenge as demonstrated by this being pushed as far as the CEO’s office.

I will wait for the outcome of the investigation to the error and go from there.

Grumpy_chap

peteuk said:

Today they have rearranged the appointment, reduced the price by 23% and will advise me where it is likely that this has gone wrong. 

I will wait for the outcome of the investigation to the error and go from there.

Well, it sounds like this has been sorted (so long as they turn up on the newly scheduled date) and you have a fairly generous amount by way of acknowledgement for the errors.

The outcome of the investigation will be some suitably vague and meaningless comment, probably ending with a commitment to staff training.  I would not worry about the outcome of the investigation and just focus on the success of the installation on the date that is now agreed.