Major company retaining our money despite agreeing to refund and collecting furniture.

[AvocadoAndFitch]

I need some help, very basically we ordered in total 3 chairs from a well known and respected high street company (paid on card). 2 arrived initially one was incorrectly described and the other was incorrectly made, they returned incorrect chair for another more expensive chair (we paid most of the extra and they gave a small good will gesture) and reassured us the other was correctly made.

The 3rd chair arrived very poorly made, after a lot of lying to us they got FIRA out and they sided with us about both chairs. The company agreed on a full refund after collection, they collected a week later.

Since collection (3 weeks ago) we have had one partial refund in the form of a cheque but they made sure we couldn't cash it. Payee was our surname plus the word "and" i.e instead of Fitch it was Fitchand. We rang and was promised a corrected amount and named cheque to arrive within the week, this didn't happen (2 weeks ago). We complained last week and was told another cheque would arrive, it hasn't.

I wrote an Email to the retail chairman, setting out our issues more fully and explained we hadn't been paid (over £700) and could he assist us in returning our money.

We had an email back on monday from part of his "personal team" saying she would look into our complaint and report back with her findings. So no hint of when we will get our money back.

So, what is our next step? We are away next week so if this continues it will be a full month since collection that we will actually have the money in our account and 5 months since ordering.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Trading standards and then, if necessary, small claims court.

When you say you paid by card, do you mean credit card? If so, you should contact your card issuer and they can mark it as a disputed payment. You should be able to do the same if you paid by Visa Debit. If you have already paid the card off you should still be able to do this, it might just mean that the dispute has to be resolved before the money is credited back to you.

Otherwise, as HappyCamel says, Trading Standards and small claims court. Before going the court route though, you should send a "pre-action" letter giving them one last chance (and a specified time period) to sort it out - have a look online and you should be able to find plenty of precedents to use as a basis.

If you paid by credit card, the card company is jointly liable. That means you can get your money back from them regardless of whether or not you have paid the card off already. So I would contact them. I would also send the company a letter as suburbandweller suggests giving them a time limit after which you will take action if they fail to refund your money. You don't need a solicitor to take action on a small claim and you can claim the court costs back from the company.

Look at the relevant provisions of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (about item being as described, fit for purpose, of satisfactory quality etc.). Then refer to these in your letter. If the claim would be for less than £5k then it's a Small Claims Court matter. Tell them you will issue proceedings for breach of the terms implied by the SGA into the contract for sale if they do not give you your money back.