Quote:
Originally Posted by lovesquadsue
Hi again Dave,
No we have not signed anything at all.
The lawyer has told me that he has released the money as follows:
£14448.00 to the developer and £3612.00 to our UK agent as commission.
The developer and the agent have confirmed this. The developer have said they have got not problem refunding their part but want us to pay a canx fee of 15% (they are looking into this now as they did not know we hadnt signed anything as the lawyer told them we had signed). The UK agent is saying its down to the lawyer to refund us the money they have received as commission as its down to his negligence (which is a total joke - why should the get commission on a no deal?).
I have not got anything in writing that confirms how the client account will be used - just verbal information from the agent and the lawyer.
I have got confirmation that the money has been received by the lawyer and have also got a transaction complete confirmation from my banks International Banking Team.
I have not got anything in writing from the developer re the cancellation although they have confirmed over the phone and via email that they will refund the monies etc. The stumbling block here is they want to refund the monies to the lawyers client account - I am then worried if he will refund them to us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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1. The UK agent can only have been authorised by the developer to be given any commission I would have thought, and therefore the developer should have the ability to recover this if no sale contract has been signed - the problem could be in the terms of the agent agreement.
If the UK agent is now aware that you have cancelled I can see no acceptable reason to keep YOUR money (maybe a small amount for admin).
2. In most legal systems canellation fees must be "reasonable" and can only be claimed to covered "costs" for example, commisison / admin / lost profit etc. - if the apartment you cancelled on has been resold for the same or more money then there is very little cost incurred (maybe admin costs).
3. It is possible that the developer is following the accepted route for refunding since you were never the source of the money as far as he is concerned.
Just to be clear:
- you say that you did not sign any agreement with the lawyer
- but did you actually signed a contract with the developer agreein gto the 15% cancellation fee ??
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