ajc

[ajc]

Hi, I recently signed up with Red Driving school for 2 lessons for my son. They sent a driving instructor who my son liked ,so we continued with his lessons and paid him £390 for a block of lessons.
However the driving instructor has vanished and Red will take no responsibilty saying our contract was with the instructor not them. I have no address for the instructor as we presumed he was reliable having booked him through a reputable company. ( Friends of ours booked him at the same time too!!)
Have Red no responsibility here?? They won't even give us an address!
Any ideas we are seriously out of pocket??!!

 

[ALewis]

Hi ajc,
I've taken a look through their terms & conditions and it does in fact state multiple times that they are not a party to any contract between yourselves and the instructor, however they act purely as an 'agent'.
They will never disclose to you an instructors address as this would be a breach of the Data Protection Act and could cost them a £10k fine easily.

Honestly, where one party of a contract has gone AWOL, theres not a right lot that can be done about it other than hope for a bit of decency - if you live in a small ish town, it may be worth a drive around hunting down the vehicle? I don't suppose your son knows the vehicle reg ? (id assume not, unless he has photographic memory).

Again, depending on the size of the population for the area the instructor covered, you could I suppose try tracking him/her down via facebook, as I know that RED provide the instructors full name on emails? that might shed some sort of light on the situation or atleast, if this instructor is rogue and has broken any criminal laws, the police could potentially get his IP address which , hopefully, they could then use to find his/her home?

Shooting in the dark here, sorry

 

[LondonGirl]

It's worth reporting it to Trading Standards as they build up records of things like this. It may not help you now, but it may help someone else in the future.

How did you pay the £390?