Will they take me to court for this?

[littlestarschildminding]

I was setting up a new business and I made an enquiry about placing an ad with an online site. They said they could place it and sent me an invoice. Now I wasn't in a position straight away to place they ad so stupidly just didn't reply. Then they sent me another invoice and I sent them an email saying that I no longer wanted to place the ad. (this was before it was due to be placed online). They claim to have not received it of course! From then on they have been re-sending me the invoice getting ruder and ruder in their emails about not paying.
As far as I am aware the advert was never live on the site. I cancelled it before it was due to go live.

Now its less than £150 that they think I owe them for an ad that was never placed.

Surely if you send an invoice for a service in advance then if you don't receive the payment you just don't provide the service. (If they provided the service and then sent the invoice then that would be different I appreciate) but I haven't actually had anything from them.

They are threatening to take me to court.

Should I just pay up..its alot of money when you are trying to start up and I really can't afford to pay for it. Especially as I didn't even get the advertising from it.... Are they just trying to intimidate me into paying.

I do know I was in the wrong for not replying to the initial invoice....time just got carried away with me!

My questions are:
Am I liable for this invoice- even though they didn't provide the service?
Will it be worth their while taking me to court over £150?
What is the procedure?
Will they be likely to win if they did?

Thanks for your advice

Do they have a copy of their terms and conditions available online? Or did they send them to you? You need to check them first.

Did you sign a contract?

I assume not, and also assume that you didn't send them an ad to be placed.

You just enquired about cost, and they said they had space for the ad if you wanted to go ahead?

Email them to tell them you are contacting trading standards wrt to their business practises.

do you have a copy in your sent box of the email cancelling?

did you respond to their other emails about not paying?

i don;t know about the legality of them enforcing payment if you did not receive the service , i doubt that is legal, but if they displayed the ad, then you will need to check the T&C they sent..

i would seek advice from CAB

BTW, did you send them an ad.. how could they have displayed it if you didn;t?

Freckle- They have general T&Cs on their website but it doesn't say anything about their adverts only that you will be invoiced and payment is due in advance. I don't remember getting any terms and conditions from them.

Scuff- No I didn't sign a contract. I did however send them the ad as they wanted to see it before they agreed if they could put it on.

Im so clueless about all this!

I guess I did tell them that I wanted to place the ad but I didn't think at that point I was committing to it.

TIA

Tell them to take you to the small claims court. I would put money on them backing off pronto!

I don't have any of the originals from them or copies my responses as my laptop was stolen in a burglary

LULU- I have been burying my head in the sand a bit since my initial emails with them and hoping they would go away...not the best solution I know. But other than paying I have no idea how to deal with it.

I feel a bit like they are trying to inimidate me into paying it now. I guess if everyone thinks Im liable to pay it then I probably will. I just feel that as I did cancel it and they didn't run it then I shouldn't have to pay it!

did you email them an ad to use? if not, and you did not get the service, then there is no service for them to sue you for payment of...

i would speak to CAB.. but tell the people chasing you are seeking legal advice and will get back to them when you have sought advice.

LuLu- Yes I sent them the ad because they had to approve it before they decided if they would use it.
I assume they did not use the ad as I cancelled it before the day it was due to go live.

i see

are you absolutely sure that they did not use it?

you are in a bit of a tricky situation with no proof of cancellation

if they took you to court, you could pay up before it got to court, or go to small claims and defend yourself, it is not like a big court with judges in wigs etc..

they would probably seek their costs back from you too

they might be using scare tactics but i would definitely seek legal advice from CAB

Presumably this quote is correct from the CAB website

"If the defendant is not defending the case.

If you are the defendant and you accept that you owe the money claimed, you will not be defending the case and the court will not allocate it to the small claims track to be dealt with.

If you can pay the money immediately, you should send it to the claimant directly"

So presumably even if they do file a claim with small claims then I can just pay it + interest. I can't imagine they could add much in the way of costs onto it?? Could they? Surely only the cost of submitting the claim.

Hopefully they know they aren't really entitled and are just trying to intimidate me!

Or should I just get it over with and pay it

What was the timescale between sending them the ad for approval and cancelling it? If only a day, then you should be OK. However, if there was a long gap between sending the ad and then cancelling (the day before it was due to be published), you may have some difficulty. They had already stated that payment is due in advance but you only gave them 24 hours notice that you didn't want to place it (which sort of implies that you had previously agreed to use them). That gives them very little time to replace it with something else.

Freckle- Yes it was a while Im afraid. At least 2 weeks after their initial invoice and I guess the ad was due to go live within about a week...Its more that I assumed that I only made the booking with them when I paid the invoice rather than their approval of my ad was my booking so to speak. When I had the second invoice I din't think I had made the booking already.

you are on quite shaky ground especially if you had two invoices

your could have to pay costs if they take you to small claims, which could be interest, their fee for issuing the claim, and any other reasonable expenses, such as if they sought legal advice

so it could add up

perhaps you should speak to CAB, and if it sounds like you might not have a good case not to pay, esepcially if your advert was run on their site,then they could help you negotiate payment in installments, if you cannot pay £150 all at once.

best to deal with this and to communicate with the advertisers.

it is very stressful though and i am sorry .it must be a worry

have you tried phoning them? I find people very rude/unreasonable on e-mail change completely when speaking to you face to face.

I would phone accounts and set the facts out

1. You cancelled prior to the advert being live
2. The advert was never live
3. If they want to take you to court they couldn't prove you owe anything but you would be quite happy for them to waste their money doing this
4. You are finding their tactics extraordinary, and would certainly never use them again as a result and will in fact advise others not to use them either unless they stop harassing you...

I suspect they will drop it! I find with my business when I buy stuff there is a disconnect always between accounts and sales and it is usually accounts that put the proverbial dogs on you as they have been 'told' by sales that you owe the fee.... I find the tune usually changes when they are appraised of the facts!

Don't pay unless they prove to you the advert was run - in which case you are liable and will need to pay.