Thanks very much for the reply. The company back tracked quite a bit and offered to honour the second delivery date. To be honest their attitude and the catalogue of problems made me so unhappy with them I decided not to accept and simply walked away from it all. Because it was a gas cooker it needed someone qualified to uninstall the old one and install the new one. They use a rather bureaucratic service provided by Aga Rangemaster at a cost of £125. It seems that whilst the cookers are good, the service provided by Aga Rangemaster isn't popular - perhaps because of the wad of terms, conditions and demands you get through the post from them AFTER you have paid for the service with their distributor. I have since found another distributor - a small business about 40 miles away who provide the whole service with their own engineer and a saving on the online price I would have had to pay. Being relatively small they have motivated staff who are interested in what they are doing too. Better yet, because they don't use the manufactures seemingly highly inefficient installation service we don't have to wait several weeks either. An example of the old 'every cloud has a silver lining' in the end

I feel this might be a bit unusual and cant find anything on the forums that quite fits the scenario. This relates to Walter Tipper Limited t/a Cookers and Ovens A couple of weeks ago I ordered a cooker on-line. As it was gas I also paid for installation and removal of the old one. I was given a delivery time of this week (they are custom made I am told). Monday the courier (as it turned out) called to check delivery for Tuesday and that happened as scheduled. However the courier wasn't qualified to fit the cooker. The trader admitted processing the order wrongly and offered to refund the fitting and removal charge which I declined. They re-arranged the delivery for next Thursday and arranged for collection of the one delivered. (Fitted units use a different delivery team). As there were several requests to confirm the acceptance of the new delivery date by both the trader and their contractor (all confirmed) after another today I was concerned that it wasn't going to happen so I confirmed in writing (email) that I would only accept the delivery as long as it happened on the date arranged - next Thursday. A couple of hours later I get an email saying the delivery is confirmed for next Thursday as arranged. About 50 minutes later I get an email saying they have decided to cancel the order and refunded the money. 1. The cooker is replacing a broken one so the need is relatively urgent. To place another order elsewhere will see a delay until mid to late October now so I have lost out in terms of delays. 2. They have had my money (about £1.5k) for quite sometime and so I have lost interest on that. 3. I have incurred expenses with calls and time. There terms state the contract is formed on despatch of the goods but as I rejected the goods without the installation I had paid for they claim the contract was terminated at that point even though I didn't ask them to collect only to fulfil the contract which they appeared to confirm they were doing. there is nothing in the terms which excludes any liability on their part for delays or losses etc.. The order was placed with the confirmation that delivery was urgent and I paid for a 'premium' delivery service. Do I have any options or are they able simply to bank my money for several weeks and return it with no obligation whatsoever?