Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013

A question about : Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013

We are moving house and have just chosen a surveyor to carry out a survey of our new home for Ј500. We found them online and have only dealt with them via email so far.

On instructing them, we received their T&Cs on 13 Feb and they have booked to carry out the survey on 24 Feb. They require full payment prior to releasing the report to us.

Having checked their T&Cs, their cancellation rights do not appear in accordance with the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. They state:
1) if cancel within 7 days, full refund
2) if cancel after 7 days (but before day of survey), Ј50 admin fee charged
3) if cancel on day of survey, 25% of fee charged
4) if cancel after survey but before report sent, 80% of fee charged.

Basically, they haven't asked for my permission to commence work within the (statutory) 14 day cooling off period and haven't notified me of my cooling off period anyway.

I have no intention currently of cancelling as we want the survey done, but I wonder if I would be entitled to cancel AFTER receiving the report and requesting a full refund as they have not not complied with the regulations. Has anyone ever done this?

Not looking for views on the moral position - I will consider what I feel is fair to do. I'm just interested in what people feel is possible and whether anyone has experience of this.

Thanks

Best answers:

• Ok, The Consumer Contracts Regulations state that if the service is provided in the cancellation period
  Quote:
• Ok, I'll bite!
  (Thank you frugal Mike for your reply).
  On the main site, the guide to reclaim parking charges states what information had to be included on the charge and if any of this is missing, you can avoid the charge even if it is just. Anyone care to try to explain why my situation would be any different?
• I think the parking charges that can be avoided if information is missing are the legally enforceable ones issued by councils (as opposed to invoices from private companies that have no statutory backing).
  I think the big difference between your case and the parking case is that some people view the parking fine as an unfair stealth tax, so they think it fair to make the council play by all the rules in order to collect it. And as mije1983 said, the fine is usually completely disproportionate to any benefit the car owner gained from parking where they did.
  In your case you will be willingly entering into a contract with the intention of getting significant benefit for free. I think this is significantly different to the parking situation (although I guess there may be people driving around looking for technicalities they can use when parking).
  You are of course perfectly entitled to do this though, and the law may well be on your side. It would almost certainly need a small claim because I can't see the company just giving your money back, and there's a part of me that would be very interested to know how that claim went.
  And at the very least it would bring to the attention of the company that they are committing an offence, if indeed they have failed to supply the required information.
• Fair point mije, that sentence in the guide is quite clear.
  For the sake of the debate, I will clarify a few points:
  - I've paraphrased the t&c in my original post, not copied them word for word nor will I be doing so
  - when I paid and instructed the surveyor, they had not sent the t&c so I entered the contract with no thought of this scenario
  - the surveyor booked the appointment via the estate agent and then told me. I think technically they need to tell me starting work early affects my cancellation rights which arguably was not done, specifically as they are doing the work within 7 to 14 days.
  Frugal Mike - in the absence of other comments, I think I agree with you that this is technically possible. I wanted to consider this in case I had a genuine cause for complaint. Assuming everything goes fine, I'll just point out to the company they should check their t&c.
• The civil law may be on your side.
  The criminal law, on the other hand, perhaps provides that this may be fraud. You are setting out to obtain a service with no intention of paying for it.
• Do you have a link to this surveyors website or is this (as I strongly suspect) a prank thread you've come up with during your school holiday?
• To actually answer the question:
  Strictly according to the legislation, you are correct that you could cancel for a full refund. However, there is one small problem: They already have your money, and they won't refund in that situation unless a court orders them to. So you'd have to go to court and explain that yes, the work is complete; yes, it's perfectly satisfactory, but you want a refund because they haven't told you about this bit of the CCRs which you already know about. And you would fail, with costs awarded against you, because the underlying point of the law is to be reasonable.
  It's a useful one to get evidence of, so that if you need to take them to court because they didn't do a good job, you have a nice bit of additional legislation to back up your case, but you haven't found a magical bit of legislation that lets you get lots of free goods and services until companies update their T&Cs.