Hi

Wonder if anyone could help with some advice as we suspect this Company will pursue this. In June 2005 we put our shop up for sale with RTA Business Consultants. Their Agent came round and valued the business. We did not realise at the time but they overvalued the business probably just to get our business and then asked for ?00+VAT upfront. We paid them as the Agent assured us they could get a sale as it was a good business. At no time were any more fees mentioned only their commission fee if the business was sold which we would have been happy to pay.

Nobody came to view until nearly a year later when we had to drop the price to less than half their valuation. In total only 3 people in one year. At no time did they ever contact us with any feedback, we were always calling them to ask what was happening and if there was any interest. The staff seemed useless.

Unfortunately the business had to eventually close due to personal reasons so we did not renew the lease. We wrote to them saying the business was no longer for sale and had closed. They then asked for another ?00+VAT withdrawal fee. We were shocked, it does not take ?00+ to take a property off their website. This was a hidden cost, they should have made it clear to us that their fee upfront whether the business was sold or not was in fact nearly ?200.

We ignored them. Would you believe it they are now asking for ?000 plus, their full commission charges saying that we have stopped them from selling the business as the business had closed and we have breached our contract with them. They were sole agents the whole time. We feel that we had given them enough time to sell our business and were very disappointed that they had not achieved a sale. We don't know where we stand legally - are they just trying to extort money from us. We are not in a position to pay this sort of money out for nothing and were not happy with the service they provided anyway! Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
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Hi Nikki

Sorry to hear of your problems.
It does sound outragous, and hopefully some legally minded person will be along soon with specific helpful advice.

Good luck
Jenni :)
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Thanks Jenni - hope so as it would give us more confidence to fight them.
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Nikki:
I think the first port of call would be to go through all the paperwork you got from them and scrutinise the T&Cs.
If you don't have written evidence of these charges, I would think this helps a great deal.
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My partner signed a contract, looking at the back it does mention (in tiny print that you would need a magnifying glass to read) a withdrawal fee. Rightly or wrongly we trusted the Sales Agent to explain all these facts, he did not do so. Reading all of the contract's T&C's in tiny print on the back, the contract seems extremely unfair and weighted against us. Do you think we should let a Court decide if it progresses that far?
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As at the time you were acting in the course of the business the protection a court will give you is lower than that as a consumer. Having said that much will depend on the exact wording of the contract, the time you first saw the contract before signing it etc. Definately worth having it checked out, we do provide this service and if you send the documents and details as above to quotes@limeone.co.uk we can advise further.
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Thank you Antonia - We will do that and also provide further information relating to how this was dealt with by the Agent and ourselves. We feel we have been innocent victims of paying for a service which was not provided and they still want more money!
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