Hi,
After spending a few hours reading this forum, which I found enlightening, we too are subject to Anglian's "Breach of contract" and are being threatened with court action. We cancelled a contract with Anglian after the 7-days, but before the 14 days cooling of period for a porch. They then sent us a letter demanding 25% of the cost (£2200 ish). We have not had a survey completed and the porch is subject to planning permission, so for £2200 they have actually done nothing but spending 4 hours at our home and disputing the fact that they in-fact have not done anything.
We have spoken to CAB and Trading Standards regarding this who just basically quote the legislation, which is not much help. We do also have up our sleeve the additional help of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) who are giving us legal advice.
After many too'ing and fro'ing we receive a letter from a legal firm representing Anglian, to which we replied on advice by the FSB. They asked us to write to Anglian to explain why they believe that the porch is a bespoke product. We then received an email from Anglian's legal representatives with an attached letter direct from Anglain's own Company Solicitor, who stated that (and I quote) "the contract under which you have instructed us to provide you with goods and services is anything other than a contract for bespoke goods. The contract clearly refers to specific dimensions in relation to your requirement". - we also pointed out that clause (10) ‘Measurements made by the company's sales representatives are approximate and used only for the purposes of calculating the price’. - so they do not actually have the specific dimensions in relation to our requirement - no survey has been completed.
Now, after reading clause 2,3 and 4 in detail. The surveyor has to arrange an appointment within 14 days of the signing of the contract (clause 3), if you have had no surveyor, as in our case, then they themselves are in breach of contract after said period.
We also disputed clause 9(a), the 25% of the total cost as a penalty clause. According to the 'Guidance on unfair terms in home improvements contracts’ by the Office of Fair Trading 'It is unfair to impose excessive sanctions for a breach of contract. A contract term is a penalty if it requires a consumer to pay more in compensation for a breach of contract than a reasonable pre-estimate of the loss caused to the supplier. Under common law this type of term would normally be void as a penalty. Such terms deter consumers from exercising their right to cancel.’ . Their reply was that this has been upheld through small claims litigation as a genuine estimate of their losses.
We are now waiting for the legal documentation to come through as we dispute everything that they have claimed.
What I find interesting in our case is that, after instructing a law firm to act on Anglian's behalf, we then receive a letter direct from Anglian's Company Solicitor - this does obviously include that "we can still proceed with the contract" and "to keep costs down"- i.e. more sales pressure. The legal costs of a small claim cannot be passed on, only the court costs, which are minimal.
To me, this implies that the law firm has washed their hands of it and Anglian have taken it upon themselves to basically bully us into giving them some monies, or continue with the contract.
Thank you
Boswell
