The Unfair Contract Terms Act

[Aryankids]

Dear Lovely community,

I have a legal question I was hoping you could help.

I signed a rolling contract for my company with an advertising agency for 3 “indoor” spots, one post office and 2 NHS clinics. The term started back in 2018 and was renewed on 6^th March 2020 i.e. 8 days before the whole country went into lockdown. Like many other businesses, we stopped paying the unnecessary ongoing expenses.

To cut the story short, the agency agreed to cancel the contract in Nov 2020 but is demanding all the payments between March and Nov 2020.

My argument to the agency is, for a good portion of that period (March and Nov 2020) the country was in lockdown and everybody was ordered to stay at home so no services were provided to us. On those days that the country was semi-open, the general advice was to NOT stay inside i.e. get in and out of the indoor places ASAP. So again, we received no benefit from the advert at the post office (if it was running at all). Not to mention the clinics were completely closed to the public (even nowadays). So basically, no service provided yet we have been asked to pay the pre-covid rate.

I believe the agency is in breach of its contract and I like to challenge them based on the Unfair Contract Act, but the debt collector refuses to listen. In our last verbal conversation, the lady who represents the debt collector was saying “you signed a contract, and you must pay, it is not our client’s fault that the world has gone mad”.

The one-million-pound question is, do I have any legal ground to fight this back using the Unfair Contract Act? If yes what should be my response to the debt collector?

Many thanks in advance

Amir

[atticus]

What term do you think may have been unfair? What are your grounds for believing that the agency is in breach of the contract?

[Aryankids]

Many thanks for your reply.

The adverts work based on the impact (the number of people seeing the advert), the higher impact the higher premium to be paid, hence the TV adverts are very expensive and the corner shop adverts are free.

To that point, during that period the impact of all adverts was zero or very close to that hence it is unfair that they charge us for the same impact related to pre-covid when those places had a very good impact.

in other words, pre covid the post office was a very busy place, there was a long queue of people to be served was there irrespective of the time of the day that you walked into that post office. Putting an advert there and charging us accordingly based on the impact made a lot of sense. But that queue is disappeared, even today.

The same goes for those two clinics, i.e. pre-covid the receptions of those two places were full of patients and putting adverts there was sensible. since covid even nowadays, no one seats in the seating area. Again the impact went to zero and it is unfair to charge us as per pre-covid rates for those areas not to mention for a good portion of that period the places were in national lockdown.

[atticus]

The question therefore seems to me to be what the proper charge should be, and not the entitlement to make a charge.

Look at the terms of the contract relating to calculating charges. Are you sure that (a) the Post Office was closed* and (b) the clinics were closed?

*the one in our village was not.

[Aryankids]

Agreed the charges should be far less than pre-covid.

During the national lockdown, the post office was closed. The clinics might have been operational but certainly, there was no patient at the reception to look at our ads. Everything was online.

The problem is the debt collector, how should I talk to them as unlike yourself they do not listen to my argument?

[atticus]

Write to the agency, copy to the debt collector.

[Aryankids]

Thank you very much for your input on the subject.
Have a pleasant day/week ahead.