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Juan27
Posts: 3 Newbie
Six days ago I paid a reservation deposit of £500 on a new build retirement apartment by phone . Nothing has been signed and no deposit T&Cs were provided. Nothing in the apartment has been specifically tailored to my requirements. The builders were very keen to move quickly and offered part-ex. After valuation of my property the deal wasn't as I hoped and I have decided to withdraw.. Salesperson is suggesting I will not get all of the deposit back.
This seems not right. Am I not covered by the cooling off period given by Consumer Contract Regulations?. I certainly did not waive my rights as far as I can see.
This seems not right. Am I not covered by the cooling off period given by Consumer Contract Regulations?. I certainly did not waive my rights as far as I can see.
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...Salesperson is suggesting I will not get all of the deposit back.
This seems not right. Am I not covered by the cooling off period given by Consumer Contract Regulations. I certainly did not waive my rights as far as I can see.
Sounds a bit complicated.- The Consumer Contract Regs allows a service provider to make deductions for parts of the service received during the cooling off period.
- So if they have done some work (registered your reservation details, instructed a valuer, etc), they might argue that they have the right to retain part of your £500.
But there are other considerations/arguments, including...- They didn't discuss refund terms before you paid - on that basis, what would a 'reasonable person' expect the refund terms to be?
- For example, if a 'reasonable person' would expect the fee to be fully refundable (and they didn't say otherwise), you would have a case for claiming the full refund
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It really depends on the company as I understand it.
Some companies will fully refund, some may partially refund because of the costs they have incurred to cover the valuations
The conditions of the payment should have been given when discussing the part ex offer. You should have asked also what would happen if the value wasn't as expected etc.
The only thing you can do with nothing in writing and in absence of this being specified is put your request for a refund in writing and explain that the t&c's of this payment were not given to you at the time of making the payment and hope they agree to a refund.
If they refuse then you may have alternate avenues such as small claims court.
If you paid by credit card, you may be able to get them involved.
The lesson here is not to think about what could go wrong after and to ensure you have anything like this confirmed in writing first. Most major builders have a booklet explaining their schemes. May be worth checking if they have one for you to look at what that says?0 -
Hmm thanks for the responses. I guess my point would be that I have not signed anything as yet or been given T&C of the deposit. This is probably because of the suppliers desire to proceed with deal with considerable haste, but also their MO seems to be to avoid providing hard facts up front.
In the analogous situation of a private buyer incurring pre contract costs like valuation/survey and the deal falling through they just have to accept the loss, so in the absence of agreed T&C stating otherwise I would have thought it reasonable that the supplier ordered valuation etc at their own risk.
Probably not worth the risk of small claims however.0 -
One other thought. I paid the deposit by credit card; might that provide a way to recover any part of my deposit retained by the supplier?0
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Yes, you can put in a dispute through them if the builder refuses to refund. The onus then would be on them to challenge it.0
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