Thanks for the replies.
Blawes1 –
Bernard, this is really a continuation of the thread `Global Name` company keeps…….., which you had replied to, thanks.
It is the agent who has retained my money. I have e-mailed the builder in Spain but have not had a reply yet. I am trying to establish wether the builder was actually informed about this deposit. Forcing the agent to reveal the builders details (i.e. the principal of the contract) was a job in itself.
Anyway, the money was paid as I signed the pre-sale agreement on a sunday evening before I flew back to the UK. At 9:00am the following morning (mon), I phoned to cancel my purchase. I didn’t think there would be a problem as I had been promised, verbally, that I would have a 14 day cooling-off period, which had seemed a reasonable statement and had no reason to not believe it. The pre-sale agreement, on first view, appeared to be half in Spanish. I realised afterwards that this was a Spanish translation after the English text.
The bottom line here is the agent didn’t need to keep my money, ok, maybe they had incurred some costs with regard to admin, but I offered to cover them anyway.
One of the subclauses reads –
`This reservation is made on behalf of the builder and ***** ************* remains exempt from any responsibility`
This term gives the agent licence to do whatever they please. The agent has retained my money, not passed it to a builder, and yet the court has decided that I can’t take them to a hearing. I issued a summons to the agent under the `Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999`, which I feel I can prove, but if the court has accepted their argument that they are only agents and therefore protected, this term can never be challenged.
Banushouse –
Never mind Spanish Law, this is English Law. I find it ludicrous that someone who buys a timeshare property today has more rights and is protected better than a person purchasing overseas property through an agent.
Thanks to all others who took the time to read this thread.
