Livid that chain is demanding £750!

[H0neyBee]

I'm beyond cross - we are due to move house in less than 4 weeks and a couple who are two links up the chain have now changed their mind about the house they want to buy and switched to one which isn't ready on the completion date. They are demanding that the whole chain delays completion for 2 weeks (impossible), or that 4 of us all contribute £750 to their costs of hotel and storage for 2 weeks. That would be us, my vendors, themselves and the current owners of their new house, all paying to make £3000 total.

I'm furious, we don't know this couple at all, as they're neither our buyer nor vendor, and I feel this is blackmail. Their costs are no fault of any part of the chain, they have simply made a decision to switch houses. Our part of the chain was pre-existing and had the move date agreed since March, and they accepted the offer knowing that date was fixed - yet suddenly they want to change plans and bill us all.

Currently we are refusing to pay and the estate agents are negotiating, but unfortunately we haven't yet exchanged contracts so our options are rather limited. We really can't afford to have this chain collapse. Any suggestions? I will certainly be asking for receipts etc as I am not paying for these idiots to stay in a posh hotel for 2 weeks. We all have our own moving costs and other costs too, this is a big chunk of the money I had saved for our new boiler! Grrrr... TIA for any ideas.

[Felascloak]

I think you should ask MNHQ to move this to chat or property to get more responses. You can do this by reporting your post

[cexuwaleozbu]

Agree this doesn't belong on feminism chat!

But you are quite right. The additional costs are no fault of the rest of the chain and £3,000 is peanuts on the scale of the kinds of sums that are being transferred when property changes hands, they should absorb whatever costs they need to into the financial arrangements that are covering the rest of the transaction.