This happened back in the early 1980s, but I'm just wondering what MNs think of it? Not particularly bothered either way, but people to whom I've related the story are either highly amused or truly appalled!
Scene: we're selling our house. The buyers have been, frankly, a pain, delaying Exchange of Contracts date quite a few times with various demands, complaints, insisting on purchase price being lowered yet again ... but eventually, after we've given in quite a bit to their damands, they say they're FINALLY happy with everything and Contracts are exchanged and a completion date agreed. We proceed with sorting out the purchase of our new home, booking moving firm, and of course, the owners of the place we're buying are able to make their own arrangement for their move.
ONE DAY before bloody completion, with everything set in place for the move(s), they phone to say they've decided they don't after all like the fitted carpet that's throughout the downstairs, and they want a further £500 knocked off the price!!!! Now, they've never said a word about the bloody carpet, and we'd included it in the price, not charged extra for it, so we tell them, politely, sorry, no more reductions. Also, they're legally obligated to complete, having exchanged contracts. So what do they say? Basically, that they'll delay completion anyway, even if they have to complete eventually, just to mess us up, and the people in the house we're buying, along with movers we've booked, our solicitors, the mortgage companies and - generally - the whole thing will be a nightmare. They DON'T like the downstairs carpet and they want a reduction!!!!
So my husband gives in and agrees to knock £500 quid of the price, just to avoid this complete mess up of a delay. But I am FUMING. So I take action. I get down on my hands and knees and TAKE UP every square inch of fitted carpet, in three rooms and a hallway. For good measure, I take up the underlay too. Takes hours and hours. Next day, move begins - I give the perfectly good carpet and underlay to the moving men, who are delighted (it was, by the way, extremely good and expensive wool carpet). Legal stuff, financial stuff all goes through, we leave with removal vans and new owners move in.
I'm told their reaction, when they saw bare ground floor, was unprintable! Ha ha ... would have cost them FAR more than £500 to recarpet.
So - was I being unreasonable? The 'we don't like the carpet' stuff was just a ploy to get the price down even more. And in the early 1980s, £500 was quite a lot of money!
AIBU?
Amused or horrified?
oldgrandmama · 02/08/2013 11:11
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
Excellent post oP.
When we bought our last house we discussed arrangements for having post forwarded. We had arranged ours through RM,like normal, same ppl.
The vendors decided they would just let their post be delivered as normal (so to our home) and "pop by" to collect it once a week as they weren't't moving far away. So they used to just open the porch and take their mail.
Easily solved in the end by locking the porch of course.
We had our sellers want extra for the garden shed. We said we weren't interest and they took it with them. The weird thing was it wasn't a particularly special shed but was frankly a bit old and knackered.
Our neighbours later told us they'd arrived with it when they moved into our house 15 years before 
Must have been a ridiculous effort to move it!
Brilliant
I had a buyer's solicitor demand a £2000 retention of the price in case of further legal issues relating to a recently resolved lease issue.
Strange thing was he was the solicitor who had resolved the problem and it was 5.10pm the night before we were due to exchange & complete at 9am the next morning.
My solicitors reaction was unprintable 
My solicitor advised we allowed the retention but she drew up some legal paperwork relating to it (overnight!!) and sent it for signing which he did.
Basically he agreed to be charged for every letter she wrote relating to the retention And he f**ked us about for 2 & half year, often not answering correspondence until the 3rd letter...
Well lets just say he was little when he finally got the bill - should have read the paperwork
I bloody hate people who try to screw every penny out of the people they are dealing with when house buying/selling and seem to see it as a badge of honour to have been as awkard ('tough' 
) as possible.
Buying and selling is stressful at the best of times, do we have to turn it into a bloody adversarial process, can we not all just be nice to each other [hippy emoticon]
Well you learn something new every day!
I was reading it with porn film connotations then decided it must have been an autocorrect of big mouth!!
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