Wedding Supplier - COVID-19

[Mattarono]

It's okay to me

Yes, you were unlucky. I remember I had such organizational problems with the wedding agency that I had to install the dance floor at the appointed time. Still, everything went well, and we agreed. About your situation, my opinion is that. Before you signed the contract, you had to discuss everything with the suppliers. You should have provided for all this when you signed the contract with them—any failure of yours and how it will affect your wedding, business, and so on. Unfortunately, you didn't do it. Put yourself in the position of the suppliers, they also hoped to work with you at the appointed time, you are not the only one, so I can understand them too. In short, you have a challenging situation, so you need to solve it as quickly as possible.

[Rorrryyy]

Yes, you were unlucky. I remember I had such organizational problems with the wedding agency that I had to install the dance floor at the appointed time. Still, everything went well, and we agreed. About your situation, my opinion is that. Before you signed the contract, you had to discuss everything with the suppliers. You should have provided for all this when you signed the contract with them—any failure of yours and how it will affect your wedding, business, and so on. Unfortunately, you didn't do it. Put yourself in the position of the suppliers, they also hoped to work with you at the appointed time, you are not the only one, so I can understand them too. In short, you have a challenging situation, so you need to solve it as quickly as possible.

Hi Mattarono have you posted this on the wrong thread? Your reply has no relevance to anything that I have said on this thread?

[ostell]

Rorrryyy that was a spam post. There is a link to another site in there. Hit the triangle exclamation mark and report it as spam

[Rorrryyy]

Just to update this is still going on with with the catering supplier...

After playing email and letter tennis with their solicitor, their solicitor informed me that she was no longer acting on their behalf 26 May.

I have received the latest letter from the business themselves 18 June - in which they have offered me a further chunk of my money back, but still refusing to provide any justification of how they can believe they are entitled to keep £1,217.63 of my £3,382.32 of my deposit which they are still holding, more than a year since our contract was frustrated due to our June 2020 wedding not being possible, due to the government restrictions, it was not possible for you to hold a wedding in any capacity, as it was against the law to hold a gathering as well as interact with members outside of your own household.

"In order to provide additional colour to the computation of the £2,435.27 figure we will require you to enter into a
binding non-disclosure agreement. No doubt you will resist the same and, in any event, this will only drag out matters
further. No doubt, you will object to the further detail provided in any event.

We therefore propose to draw a line under this matter as follows. To prevent further time being expended on this to
the detriment of all concerned, we will agree (on a without prejudice) to refund to you, in addition to the £947.05
already discussed, 50% of the figure of £2,435.27 (ie: £1,217.64), a total of £2,164.69, in exchange for your agreement
to accept the same in full and final settlement.

This offer is manifestly reasonable and is one which we believe the Small Claims Court would find eminently so, even
if we should be unsuccessful in presenting our position under 1) and 2) in the event of legal action (which please do
not assume is a given: we believe the prospects of success for our positions are favourable).

We certainly can, and will, go no further than this without prejudice offer, which (please note) will irrevocably expire
in seven days’ time.

We will not waste important management time on ADR, not least because the Small Claims Court procedure is designed specifically to provide swift resolution to matters which do not involve sums which warrant the time that ADR would involve. It is, in other words, uneconomic for us to consider ADR and we will not (as we are perfectly entitled to determine not to, without there being any consequent inference of weakness in the merits of our legal position).

Should this offer be rejected (or not be responded to) within seven days of the date of this letter, there will be no
further correspondence between us in this matter and we reserve our rights to make all of the foregoing arguments
in the event that you proceed with legal action.

We hope that we can agree a prompt and manifestly equitable resolution to this matter but this is now solely in your
hands."

Asking me to enter a binding non-disclosure agreement about how they claim my deposit was spent would be fine by me, they then go on to say that I would only disagree with it anyway. This just smacks of them being unable to justify such an amount, remember we have not even had so much as a food tasting session from them.

I am thinking of asking for £2,500 back, meaning they would still be keeping £882.32 for exchanging a few emails, this would still really annoy me, but I don't know how much of an appetite I have to continue this, as it sucks the life out of planning for our rearranged wedding.

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated, as they have stated that I must accept or decline before Friday.

Thanks!

[ostell]

Small claims court has been mentioned. Can you raise the filing fees that have been mentioned? If you have law in one you may be able to get help with the fees. Quite often firms don't believe that you would start legal proceedings and the shock of receiving the form concentrates the mind.

[islandgirl]

That letter is extremely rude and unpleasant. I am sure the experts here will be along to assist but I think I would ignore it and issue a Letter before Action (or go Moneyclaims online if I had already done so) though I do not know the details of the case sufficiently to comment on its merits. One tactic I have used in the past has been to fill out the form and take a screenshot of the final page and then send to the debtor saying if you don't pay a certain amount by a certain date I will hit "send". It is amazing how effective this can be as, as Ostell says, they think you are bluffing. Don't obviously send them the page with the particulars of claim on it just one with the official headers on so they know it is ready to go! Remember you get your fees back if you win. I wish you luck.

[jaguarsuk]

I’d send a LBA giving them 30 days or you’ll file a claim.