There are two sides to every story and it seems only fair that we explain the true facts. We marketed Mr B's property for over 8 months on various internet portals, our For Sale" board was put up in his garden and his property was displayed in our office window. During the 8 months we arranged several viewings.

In February 2018 we took an offer for his property. We communicated this offer to Mr B. An hour later the purchaser contacted our office to say he did not want to proceed with the offer. Two days later Mr B contacted our office to say he wanted to take his property off the market due to a change in circumstances. He sent a withdrawal letter in to the office which stated To confirm we would like to take our property off the market due to a change in circumstances".

A couple of weeks later Mr B contacted our office to advise us that he had decided to sell the property to that purchaser, but as he had known him for 30 years, he felt that he should only pay £600 which was half of our contracted commission. We declined this offer as we believe it is unreasonable to allow Mr B to have a reduced fee on the grounds that the purchaser is an acquaintance, and especially given that we negotiated the sale and passed on the purchasers offer to Mr B. Furthermore, the purchaser would have seen our advert on the internet portals and our For Sale" board in the garden.

We sent a letter to Mr B, which was returned unopened because Mr B was deliberately attempting to avoid paying our commission.

We hand delivered a 2nd letter to Mr B stating that if this purchaser went on to buy his property we would pursue our full selling fee. We quoted the Property Ombudsman term (5)r which states our entitlement to claim a commission fee if that seller terminates your instruction and a memorandum of sale is issued by another agent to a buyer that you have introduced within 6 months of the date your instruction ended and where a subsequent exchange of contracts takes place. If no other estate agent is involved this time limit extends to 2 years." For Mr B to state that this is draconian is quite unreasonable as it is taken from the Property Ombudsman's own Code of Conduct.

Mr B went on to sell his property to this purchaser in April at the price that was put to Mr B in February by our office. We only became aware that a sale had taken place when we checked Rightmove data in August which confirmed a sale had taken place. Mr B did not advise our office that a sale had taken place and was more than happy to attempt to avoid paying any fee to our office. Under the terms of our contract our commission becomes due on completion of a sale. Therefore we are entitled to claim a late payment charge because the sale took place 4 months ago and we have not been paid anything by Mr B.

I am very confident that ANY other estate agent would have been entitled to claim their full fee in this instance, irrespective of the terms and conditions because negotiations took place between the agent and eventual purchaser, which is fundamental to any sales contract.

Mr B continues to refuse to pay our invoice and legal action is now pending.

It is very sad that Mr B feels the need to try to bad mouth our office now given that we have done nothing wrong and have facilitated the sale of his property.