Completion complete, white goods removed

[fat80b]

We completed yesterday on our forever home (Build thread (garage and house) to come). The property form that listed everything included in the sale included a bunch of white goods that were missing when we got the keys yesterday.

As the place has 2 kitchen spaces, this included 2 cookers, 2 washing machines, a fridge freezer, a fridge and a dishwasher. i.e everything

Not sure what if anything we should do - our solicitor has recommended bringing it up with them as a breach of contract.

The additional complication is that the people we bought the house from are now our immediate neighbours so I don’t really want to p them off on day 1......

What would the good folks of PH recommend - push for them to meet their contractual obligations / let it go? What would be a reasonable thing to expect assuming that everything has probably been skipped?

TL/DR : moved house, all white goods removed despite being “included” in the sale - previous owners now new neighbours - what to do?

[fat80b]

breamster said:

Do you think it is a genuine mistake or fraudulent?

Through the whole process they haven’t really demonstrated that they know what they are doing - so in that way I’d say mistake.

The goods were not brand new or anything but the cost / pain to us to have to go and get new everything is there - we have agreed to leave all our goods behind in our old place on the basis that we had these ones at the new place.

For those saying : knock on the door - I would do but we are now away for 2 weeks - we could wait until we are back in the new year but this feels like time is against us - i.e if they still have them, hey might not do in a couple of weeks.

[fat80b]

jet_noise said:

Have we seen the exact words of the contract?

The goods were listed in the standard property information form you fill in when selling where they ticked the "included" box for all of them.

They weren't fitted appliances as such - i.e. not integrated appliances in a fitted kitchen but were free standing with spaces left between the kitchen units.

jet_noise said:

And a comment such as "don't know what they're doing" by the OP..

This comment was purely down to the fact that the vendors last bought and sold a house 40 years ago and have made several mistakes during the process. We had our offer accepted in May and it has taken all this time to get to completion due to a right of way issue that was finally resolved after the vendor produced a doc last week that cleared it all up... Why it took so long I do not know?
This was also after they "forgot" to include a piece of the property that was purchased separately 25 years ago.
It has been quite frustrating.

CorradoTDI said:

How are you cooking / refrigerating food currently?

We are away for the Christmas break, hence not being able to go round and ask them politely so no actual cooking/refrigerating currently going on. Plan to actually move into the property immediately after New Year.

We need to decide if buying replacements in the January sales is a good idea or not.

dickymint said:

fat80b if you can be arsed to phone and complain about a couple of quid postage then sort this fking mess out!!

Good snooping
As to what I have now done - I went via the solicitor as we couldn't go round and knock on the door to ask them politely. My solicitor has contacted the other side and pointed out that the items were marked as included on the PIF. This was done on Christmas Eve so I think we are now stuck until the first week after the new year for a response.

[fat80b]

hairyben said:

this is what I was thinking about - as it happens the OP hasn't been badly affected but this could have been a tale of a somewhat ruined christmas, what kind of person does that... The ones I've dealt with, their "little mistakes" are never not in their own favour!

Finally have an update (as I hate threads that don't reach a conclusion).

Our Solicitor contacted their Solicitor just before Christmas - We never heard back from their Solicitor.

However, in the first week of Jan, we did get a call from the Estate Agent to try and resolve it.

Everyone struggled to get a view as to what would be an acceptable amount for both sides bearing in mind the fact that the items removed were fairly old but the replacement cost was fairly high.

They were apparently apologetic and claimed it was an innocent mistake and initially offered £400 as a gesture for the 7 items as gumtree and anyvan could see equivalent replacements for this amount.....

My solicitor reckoned that 1/2 new cost of 7 items might be "reasonable", so I suggested nearer to £1500 would be about right.

They came back with an offer of £1K.

I felt that we could have increased the amount a bit but that arguing over a few quid either way would be a mistake so we accepted this offer.

They dropped a cheque and a card through our door on Monday and I cashed it yesterday. The wife was slightly annoyed that the card didn't seem very apologetic but I couldn't really care less.

In terms of replacements, we bought several new bottom of the range items a couple of weeks ago (before coming to an agreement) and have yet to get a cooker...... I've already spent more than £1K on these but at least we have a working washing machine etc...

Are we better or worse off than we would have been if they hadn't removed the items in the first place? We are slightly worse off financially but probably slightly better off appliance wise (new and clean vs old and dirty). It was definitely inconvenient and we ended up panic buying appliances just to be able to move in which annoyed my "like to do research first" gene. We have yet to see / speak to the neighbours so don't have any view yet as to the effect on neighbourly relations.