Buyers not paid for oven!

[Un4732]

Hi,

Small thing but really annoying. Home buyers agreed to pay for freestanding oven which I left. Not much - market second hand was £350-400 and they pushed me to £200 - annoying, but saved me moving it. But they have not paid a week later!

Was a rushed completion and only arranged last few days via (useless) estate agents as solicitor said not part of their remit.

Now what? Shall I go to their solicitors? They knew what they were doing I think!!

you don’t have a contract. Just leave it. Move on.

if you and they wanted this you would have included it in the contract and your solicitor would have taken the money at completion.

We bought the oven off our sellers, it was listed on the completion paperwork. Did you tell your solicitor you were selling it?

No idea how in/convenient this would be, but how about walking past the house and if you smell a dinner cooking, give the door a hard knock and brightly ask for the £200 they agreed to pay for the cooker. That they are using. That they asked for.

Even better if you can wave a text message under their noses.
Go for it. Nothing to lose, you realised they could have forgotten in the disorder of moving. No problem. Here are your details.

When I sold my house the oven was about 4 months old. £700 new. It was just included with the house. I’d let this go. You don’t actually want it.

“Why didn’t you leave it”

because that wasn’t the agreement… 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️

have you reminded them? Moving is always disruptive, so it might’ve slipped their mind. I’d drop them a note, if you don’t have a contact number.

Send them a letter saying pay or you will be round to collect on X date. You will need to go and collect it though.

you aren’t getting any money for it and I’m petty enough to take it and dump it. Lol

Honestly - I would'nt have bothered to charge for it in the first place. I am leaving my behind FOC. Too much hassle to get the thing disconnected as you would need to get a Gas Safe Engineer out (£100) - trying to co-ordinate that with the removals would be a right PIA. Second hand value is not great on such items.

I left my washing machine , fridge freezer & oven , think £250 total although was several years ago now . The buyer met me at the property and when I handed keys over , they gave me cash for the above .
Curious how you were intending on getting the money ,was it not discussed ? do solicitors usually take care of these things & add to the bill ?

Just let it go. Its more trouble than it is worth.

It's got nothing to do with solicitors if it was arranged outside of the contract.

I'll bet whoever organised it (estate agent?) hasn't given them your bank details and they are hoping you've forgotten.

Send them an invoice with your bank details on. If they ignore it it's probably not worth your bother, and solicitors will certainly not get involved.

Good on them, haggling over GBP 200 over a house purchase is pathetic.

why? Do you expect everything for free?

There's no reason why buyers should get free oven, it should be clear and agreed before exchange and completion.

Just send them a text - ‘here’s the bank details for the £200 for the cooker. If you’ve changed your mind just let me know and I’ll come by and pick it up next week’.

You should have gone via sols for things like this 🤦

The agent has no legal ability to enforce this. Your solicitor was wrong and money should have gone through them! Sounds like you had a shit solicitor. Let me guess. They were cheap.

It's a good brand and freestanding so free to have taken it - the people I bought off took the bloody shelves from the inside kitchen cabinets?!

I could have sold it but they said in an email to the estate agent that they wanted it - all be it at a fraction of what i wanted it for but thought I was being nice.

it was not £200 new - no idea where you'd get a branded oven for £200 new.

Just drop them a light, friendly, gentle reminder 'oh hey about the oven, do you stil want it?' and if so could they just paypal you (or whatever). If they say they still want it then they cant very well say theyre not going to pay for it. So the ball is in their court. If they dont pay then you could say you'll come and pick it up...
If they dont have another oven, they may then be motivated to pay for it if they think youre going to remove it...

They weren't cheap no, but they were shit, yes.

its got nothing to do with the agent. This will have gone up with a fixtures and fittings form and should have been agreed then through solicitors. OPs responsibility to get money.

Was it part of the contract? - if not and you left it there then you haven't got a chance of getting the £200

If it was in the contract as an additional sum and you solicitor completed on the sale on taking £200 short of the correct completion monies then pursue it through the solicitors - they also won't be able to get it from the buyers if they overlooked it but the solicitors would be responsible to you for their mistake.

If you didn't tell your solicitors then your mess up and take it as experience

there is no contractual context here so it will have to be done via a personal diplomacy as you have no fallback legal footing.. It may or may not work but there's little else you can do unless you're willing to remove it.

It sounds very informal and if you didn't provide payment details theu probably couldn't be bothered chasing it along side all of the other admin that house buying/selling takes. Or it's just genuinely slipped their mind or thought it was somewhere in the solicitor fees.

Why? It was the agreement 🙄

Or… are you the new owners? Give them their oven back!!!!

lol that’s the problem though - the ball is in the buyers court therefore why would they be motivated to do anything? OP doesn’t seem to have anything legally binding and buyers know this so even if they did get contacted they’d just laugh and ignore her! OP just needs to live and learn and move on imo.