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Home Renovation Tips – Your Cancellation Rights
- Published: August 8, 2010 by Umma Queenan Comments (0)
If you’ve signed to order a new bathroom, fitted wardrobes or double glazing and have now decided you just don’t want it or can’t afford it.
Signing up at home
This legislation includes not just your own home but signing up in someone else’s home, your workplace or basically anywhere other than on the trader’s own business premises.
Under consumer law, you’ve got a seven-day cooling-off period to change your mind and cancel, providing the goods cost over $35. It doesn’t matter whether you contacted the company to arrange the visit, or they turned up on your doorstep un-announced; you’ve still got the same seven-day cooling-off period, regardless of how they ended up sitting in your front room.
Some items are excluded from this, including signing up for mortgages, insurance products and delivery of food and drink. If you’re taking out finance to cover the cost you’ve also got addi¬tional rights, which are listed below.
You should be given details of this cooling-off period when you sign the contract. This may either be a separate piece of paper, often headed up as ‘Notice of the right to cancel’, or if details are included on the contract it’s got be clear and by law can’t be hidden away in the teeny tiny print. If you’re not given details of this right to cancel, the contract can’t be enforced anyway. In the real world, it can be hard to prove that you weren’t given one of these, so it’s worth asking for it upfront.
Signing up on trade premises
Generally, you don’t have the automatic right to cancel if you sign up on trade premises, so think before you sign or hand over that deposit. In some cases, you may find a company is prepared to refund your deposit and cancel your order, providing, they’ve not had the product specially made, but legally they don’t have to do this.
If you sign up to finance as part of the deal.
Signing up to a finance deal, for example, interest-free credit, also entitles you to a cooling-off period under the Consumer Credit Act. Providing you signed up anywhere other than the trader’s premises you’ve got five days to cancel, and the five days start the day after you receive the second copy of the credit agreement.
If you want o cancel, you can either use this form or write a separate letter; this should be sent to the finance company and a copy sent to the dealer within the five-day period. With letters like this it’s worth sending them Recorded Signed for so you have proof they arrived.
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