We ordered a trailer tent last August in the summer sale, and put a 10% deposit on an ex-display tent (£480). When I was doing the order we had all sorts of problems because they firstly wrote the wrong card number down, then wrote the wrong phone number down, but eventually it all went through, and they had the correct details, and we received the invoice and the receipt for the deposit through the post. I'd informed the company that we wouldn't be picking the tent up until around Easter this year, and they agreed to store it, asking just that we gave them 2 weeks notice that we wanting to pick it up.
DH phoned the company yesterday to arrange for us to go to pick it up (we'll basically have to stay overnight in the area as it's a good 4 hour drive from where we live), to be told that there seemed to be a problem and that our order had been cancelled.
DH has spoken to them again today, and has been told that they have been trying to contact us since last september, but the phone number was wrong, and they have sent us letters (which have never arrived), so, as they couldn't get in touch with us, they have cancelled the order and sold the tent to somebody else. They have not returned the deposit to my credit card, so still had £480 of our money.
They have said that they are willing to sell us a tent still, but that given that the exchange rate has changed to the worse, that we will have to pay a much higher price than the price we agreed with them last August.
They are phoning back tomorrow to give us some prices.
Where do we stand legally on this? It's my feeling that given that they have always had our 10% deposit, that we shouldn't be shafted because they have ballsed up.
What should we say to them tomorrow when they phone us? Do we have a good case to firce them to sell us a tent for the price we agreed last August - given that they have our deposit, and frankly can't have tried that hard to find our correct phone number (which I am sure they had, given the mix up I had to sort out at the time) as we are in the phone book, and they had our address (albeit with a postcode that they had missed one digit from - having CF6 rather than CF64.
Help!
Have to go and bath the smallest one now, but would really appreciate any help you can give!
W