Please advise - Caravan pitch fee refund

[marph77]

Few years ago I purchased a static holiday caravan, now though I want to sell it privately but the park management refuses to refund the pitch fee for the remaining period, which is based on calender year, runs from Jan to Dec and costs £3,500. Equally, they would also told me that they will charge the new buyer 15% commission plus VAT despite the fact that I want to sell it privately. And even If I sell it back to the park directly they would buy it back at 80% less than the market value. This is just like a trap of piling debts with hidden unknown charges. At the time of buying the caravan, I was not told or informed about these terms, and it seems their salesmen make it as they go along. So the issue here is that the practise is geared into smothering caravan owners with set of unacceptable terms which aims at given up the caravan to them despite investing thousands when it was bought.

[BankFodder]

To avoid problems, I would go along with it all and then claim for the money back through the courts.

While you have a caravan there, you are very much at their mercy. you never know what might happen to the caravan or how obstructive they might become over the sale etc.

 

I suggest that you write them a letter saying that you are not happy with their terms but that you will pay then under protest.

 

get out of their clutches and then begin a County Court action to get back a reasonable proportion of your money.

They won't take any action against the new owner as it will be nothing to do with him.

You will be able to bring the action in your local court because you are a private individual and they are a business.

 

They are only entitled to deduct for their reasonable administrative expenses.

[creepin60]

I have had the same problem in dealing with a caravan site when selling a holiday home. I am at the moment trying to claim back site fees paid in advance and not refunded but I have been looking for any information on previous cases as this would help enormously, not only for me but for everybody else who has had, is having and will definitely have in the future, problems with getting justified refunds whatever the terms and conditions of these sites state. The standard contract used by caravan sites has numerous unfair terms under the Unfair Terms of Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 so there must be someone, somewhere who has taken action against such unfair practices.

 

These sites continually quote terms and conditions which are signed when buying a caravan. What they seem to forget is that in a good many cases these terms and conditions are not made available until a unit is paid for and a good many of the important terms such as the refunds policies are certainly not brought to the attention of a buyer.

 

Really would appreciate some help on this to at least try and prevent any more caravan owners being ripped off by these sites. They charge 15% commission on any sale and all sales transactions have to go via the site office. Then they have a very unfair sliding scale of refunding site fees paid in advance which in most cases means that sellers receive no refund at all. The new occupant then pays a pro-rata site fee when the unit is sold during the season therefore the site is actually charging twice for the same pitch. The seller is still then paying for a service they cannot use i.e. pitch fee, as they no longer own the unit on that pitch. Grossly unfair and really needs to be stopped.

[perplexity]

It is not at all so clear to me that this is unfair.

 

Would you rather that the contract were to cover a fixed period, with no right to cancel before the time is up?

 

If it is rather the case that the terms in question grant an albeit penalised option to cancel, that is more, not less than a contract for goods or services would usually have to offer. So long as what they keep is more or less equivalent to a sum that a court would award in the event of a breach of contract, what they're doing, in effect, is attempting to avoid the cost of a legal action in the event of a breach of contract.

 

Why not just take the hint, instead of selling? They are obviously averse to the bother of a client who pulls out before the time is up, which is fair enough.

[creepin60]

I claimed my pre-paid pitch fee back and got it. What's more the judgement against the site stated that the term in the contract for the sliding scale of fee refunds was an unfair term under the Unfair Terms of Consumer Contracts Act 1999. Any site now using this model contract or variations of it with that term in it will have to think again about how to rip people off. That loophole has now been closed. And I was awarded all my court fees. Really enjoyed seeing the expression on the site owners face when the Judge asked if the site owner considered it unfair not to make a refund when the site had already received site fees from the buyer for the period already paid by the seller. Brilliant.

 

Result!!

[perplexity]

The opinion of a District Judge in a County Court is not a binding precedent.