Disposal of customers uncollected goods

[Jez123]

Hi, First post here!

Bit of legal advice needed please....

A customer sent me a couple of items for refurbishment. He told me in his emails to me that he was emigrating to Australia, but would be keeping the same email address and would pay me by paypal, or direct bank transfer, and would make arrangements for a courier to collect the finished goods....

This was coming up to 3 months ago.... all emails to the customer have gone unread and not been replied to.... I am owed £350

In the terms and conditions on my website I state that any goods not paid for after 3 months will be disposed of to recover any monies owed.

I presume that I can indeed now just go ahead and do that?

Any issues to watch out for?
E.G. what if the guy had been in a car crash and has been in hospital and away from his computer for all this time and had genuinely not seen any of my many emails requesting payment???

In this time of recession money is tight and I really need the £350 I'm owed! Now!

A second problem I have is with another customer who has sent an item for refurbishment but told me initially that he was going on holiday for a week.... He said he would inform me of his exact instructions as to how far he wanted me to take the work etc on his return.... This was 2 months ago and he has not been in touch since! Again, all emails to the customer have gone unanswered.
I am not owed any money for this job as I never received the go ahead to start any work on it..... I don't however wish to just store it indefinitely!
How do I stand on this one?

 

[Alpha30]

As I'm new here I can't post any likns so here is some copy and pasted info that can help you:

• The Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 provisions apply any time after the goods are ready for collection, subject to any terms imposed at the time the goods were left with you for repair.
  
  If you are in possession of a customer's goods and he/she is under an obligation to collect them (e.g. because you have repaired the goods for the customer), you are entitled to sell the goods if they remain uncollected and are not otherwise the subject of a dispute. Before doing so, you must satisfy two conditions:
  
  1. You must first send the owner of the goods written notice of:
• their obligation to collect the goods;
• details of the goods to be collected and the address at which they are held;
• your name and address;
• details of any sum of money owing in respect of the goods at the time the notice is sent (e.g. repair charges, storage costs).
  
  This notice may be delivered direct to the owner, left at his proper address or posted to it. The 'proper address' means:
• in the case of a limited or public limited company, the registered office or principal office;
• in any other case, the last known address of the owner.
  
  2. If the notice does not result in collection of the goods, you must send the owner, by recorded delivery post or registered letter:
• the same information as in the notice above, plus
• notice of your intention to sell the goods if they remain uncollected, and the date of the intended sale.
  
  The period between the issue of the second notice and the date of intended sale must be reasonably sufficient for the owner to reclaim the goods. If any money is owed to you, this period must be at least three months.
  
  If the owner still does not collect the goods by the date stated in your second notice, you can sell them. You must give the proceeds of the sale to the owner of the goods, but you are entitled to keep any money owed to you, including the cost of the sale (e.g. advertising).
  
  If the owner of the goods is not at the proper address, you can still go ahead with the sale after you have taken reasonable, unsuccessful, steps to trace him/her.

 

[Deleted member 127702]

I got fed up with a minority of customers failing to collect and pay for repairs to items that they had sent to us, and so have started charging a £40 deposit (around 25% of the final cost) - this has dramatically reduced the number of non-payers and late payers.

If you don't already do this, I recommend it; no-one so far has objected to paying the deposit. It also covers us for the cost of "no fault found" repairs.

 

[Jez123]

Thanks for that

Well obviously I have no address for the guy.... other than his old one in London and as he told me of his intention to emigrate I guess that's no good...
Can't send a registered letter to a non existent address!

The customer is already well aware of the nature of the goods, the work carried out, what the bill was to be and where the goods are currently stored! He sent the goods to me in the first place after discussing the work to be carried out....

As I said earlier, I do have in my terms and conditions a clause stating my intention to dispose of anything not paid for within 3 months... and have reminded him of this, and of my intention to sell his goods if they are not indeed paid for within 3 months of the date when he was first informed that the work was completed and the money due.

Obviously the exact letter of the law, with regards to the information you provided me with, cannot be complied with as I have no address or phone number for the customer.... just an email address :|

Three months will have passed since I first requested payment on the 8th of this month.... I really can't wait any longer for payment as in these straitened times I owe money to suppliers etc and at the moment £350 is quite a lot of money to me

 

[Alpha30]

I think that clarity is at the end where it states that provided you've made reasonable steps to trace the customer then you can go ahead and sell the goods. It sounds like you have to be fair!

 

[eventdomain]

just an email address

Ok, so send out 6 invoices to supply yourself with more than reasonable documentation. This is evidence of requests for payment, then if no response, you can consider appropriate action either to sell goods to value of or take legal action.

Also suggest you keep records of the work undertaken and take photos of the refurbished goods to prove the work was done to client specs.

 

[arcon5]

When you say the emails have not been read, how do you know? If this is from read receipt requests then these aren't always accurate as many email clients allow you to reject the request.

Try using something like http://www.spypig.com/ which basically inputs an image in the email then when that image is called at their server you will be notified the email has been opened. Although some will block images, many wont.

 

[Jez123]

I have asked for read receipts and also I found something in outlook which you can tick to "tell me when email is read" (although right now I can't seem to find it again!). That spypig idea seems like a good one and I will try that, thanks.
I've even sent emails from both my business email address and also my personal one....
For all I know the customer may have keeled over and died in his first week in Oz.....

Proving that the customer has in fact actually received notification of my request for payment could be just about impossible.... although I can of course show that I sent the emails as they are still on my computer. No doubt if that was disputed then my ISP would probably have a copy on their server.

Surely it could be expected that as I had the customers goods for some 2 months whilst work was in progress ( he sent one and then sent another about 6 weeks later, both before his move to Australia) and then a further 3 months have passed since I informed of the completion of the work, that he should even have made an effort to contact me by now???? He has all my contact details and my website should be accessible from anywhere in the world!

 

[Suzuki]

Ok, so send out 6 invoices to supply yourself with more than reasonable documentation. This is evidence of requests for payment, then if no response, you can consider appropriate action either to sell goods to value of or take legal action.

Eventdomain giving advice on invoices and legal action.... you gotta be joking right?

 

[Spongebob]

Eventdomain giving advice on invoices and legal action.... you gotta be joking right?

I'd never heard of this clown before, but thank you for a very entertaining read over my breakfast!

Great business model Chris - Send out false invoices for services never agreed to, then follow up with threats of legal action from a 'debt collecter'. What percentage of victims are intimidated into paying up?

10%, 20%?

I'm sure your mother is very proud of you, Chris.

 

[mainsys]

I had a computer left for repair, which we completed within two days and informed the customer by email it was ready, 6 weeks later when it was still uncollected we rang the customer and informed him he need to collected the repair and pay the £98 owing two weeks after that we left another message telling him he needed to collect and pay for his computer after a year had gone by and the original company was bought out and all of the old company's goods were disposed of by ourselves and a further two months had passed the customer appeared without any explanation and demanded his goods back or compensation to the full value of a new replacement, what is my position?

 

[Scalloway]

Is the old company still in existence?

 

[Minuteman Press]

What were the contractual terms and conditions?