Failure to provide the right to cancel

[jpkeates]

Thanks for that.

You have to read the agreement as a whole, but on the face of it, the Initial Commission fee is not payable. It arises on the commencement of the tenancy and no tenancy has commenced.

The second clause depends on the definition of a Tenant (is it capitalised differently in the two clauses in the original?). If there's no tenancy, there can't be a tenant, and the agent can't claim to have found one - what they have found is someone who wanted to be a tenant, unless their definition of Tenant includes someone who wants to be a tenant.

The second clause isn't a termination clause at all - the second sentence doesn't relate to termination and the first envisages the cancellation of the contract if the landlord withdraws their instruction before anything has happened, rather than how it should be terminated having operated for a period.

So if that's all there is about termination, the agreement is defective as you asserted above.

I'd say they're seriously hacked off (or nuts) to be suing you on the basis of those terms of the agreement.

[Byrdewear]

Thanks for that.

You have to read the agreement as a whole, but on the face of it, the Initial Commission fee is not payable. It arises on the commencement of the tenancy and no tenancy has commenced.

The front page of the contract says,
Under the Terms and Conditions, you will be liable to pay (Agency Name deleted) commission fees in respect of the initial period of the tenancy AND ALSO in respect of periods after the end of that initial period where the original tenant introduced by XXX remains in occupation, whether under a new agreement or by the initial agreement being extended or the tenant being allowed to hold-over (all these being “Renewals”).

Of course there is no tenancy period.

Yes, they are hacked off because I complained about them to the Ombudsman (TPO) - there was no compensation but there were elements that TPO pointed out including the fact that this was not the first time this agency was reminded about providing cancellation rights. They tried to take revenge by serving at my old address thinking that they could enforce default judgement - this is despite, I was explicitly instructing them of my new address to serve - fortunately, I had a redirect so got hold of the service and defended, counterclaimed and applied for a strike-out for defective service.
I agree, they are nuts too.

[jpkeates]

Chances are they'll fail to turn up at the court session and are just doing it for the stress.

[Byrdewear]

Chances are they'll fail to turn up at the court session and are just doing it for the stress.

I don't think so JPK - this agent is very vindictive and I am 100% sure they will turn up and argue and will even go to appeal if they lose. Very stupid in my view given they are a business and this is something they should easily write off and move on.

[jpkeates]

Good luck, they sound like a nightmare (although mostly shooting themselves in the foot).

[DPT57]

DPT57, I appreciate your thoughts but you don't know the full scale of what happened with regards to that tenant so don't jump to conclusions.... I have also seen a tendency from people to assert authority when it's not really necessary.

We can only go on what you post and what you posted in this case suggests that you take offence easily. I think this is a luxury people in business cannot afford. You don't seem to accept that what you were asking the tenant to do was an imposition and it would be quite reasonable for them to indicate the cost to them of accepting it. I have no idea whether there are lots of other reasons to reject this tenant and if there are perhaps you should have said that. On the face of it, you seemed to reject the tenant based on what to many would consider to be a reasonable, if a little cheeky, response from the tenant. I stand by my remarks.