Letting Agent not paying their bill !

trf1960

Can someone please advise me on this problem please?

My husband is a sole trader heating engineer and every now and then gets jobs from local estate agents. He got a call in February from a letting agent we have never heard of, based in Chatham, Kent (we live in Essex) who stated they had previously used a local gas engineer who had now retired and would he be interested in doing work for them as and when needed. Anyway, he did a couple of jobs for them end of February and sent invoices (totalling £250). At the bottom of his invoices (for estate agents etc) it does state "Payment to be made within 30 days of receipt".

Well lo and behold, after numerous telephone calls to this agency - and on two occasions a promise of a cheque being on its way - we have received nothing.

How and where do we stand on getting our money back? Obviously there is no way he will do anything more for this agency and I am not the sort of 'wife' that will let this go and put it down to bad experience !

Your thoughts and input would be gratefully appreciated.

fengirl_2

Small Claims Court - I think the forms are now online.

Slinky

I'd send a cough up or I'll take you to court in 7 days letter myself. This sometimes does the trick for me, although I've got as far as having to send baliffs in too.

If you do need to do the small claims court the link is

www.moneyclaimonline.org.uk

trf1960

Thanks to both of you. I think I will send them a letter first then stating that unless payment is received within the next seven days we will have no option but to take legal action.

The money claim online link seems easy enough so that will be our next step if the letter doesn't get a reaction - and payment !!

Honestly !! and they talk about rogue traders :rolleyes:

Slinky

Don't forget to mention that if you have to take them to court there will be 'resulting extra costs to you' on your letter.

One of my customers does carpet cleaning for letting agents, the agents deduct the costs from the tenants deposits so have the money to hand, but seem to be very slow at paying the carpet cleaner.

trf1960

That is what annoys me most Slinky. One of my work colleagues is a landlord and she said her agents take any payments from her straight away so yes I know they have the money there but they are loathe to pay it out. It's just wrong. I am sure the larger letting agents do not operate like this though, its seems to me to be the smaller agencies that are the worst to deal with.

In my eyes its a form of theft. He has done the work requested and the tenants left happy so its not as though he hasn't carried out the work or left it faulty etc. You know I had a bad feeling about this agency right from the start. When my husband told me their name I surfed the internet, nothing listed, checked Yell.com, Thomsonlocal you name it, nothing. All we had was a Chatham address and the company name to send the invoices to. When I rang them to 'check' their address some guy answered with an abrupt "yes" - I even had to ask if I was speaking to the right company? I got the impression he was sitting in an office with one phone on his own. Even then it kept going through to an answerphone.

I don't know...I can see a small claims court on the horizon here. :mad: