Dear Mr & Mrs M,
This was an unfortunate situation which you have described and we feel bad about it.
It is common for exchange dates to slip in a house sale chain, but for the chain to try to stick to the completion date (perhaps eg because a mortgage offer will expire). For this reason we always warn our customers to allow at least two weeks between exchange of contracts and completion.
We do our best to understand from the customer how smoothly the legals are progressing in their chain – in your case you had asked to be put into the diary for a certain date and we didn’t know we were not moving you until a day or two beforehand.
The problem (from our point of view) is that we have to hold a removals crew to do your job and we have to turn away other customers who want that date. If you therefore let us know at short notice that the crew is no longer required then we still have to pay staff wages and vehicle standing charges etc – some of this cost was passed onto you (not all of it).
I acknowledge your comment about calling you 10 days before the removal date, but in a busy, low margin business we simply can’t make speculative phone calls to customers asking if there is any news, when they have already told us their moving date and it’s in the diary.
To reiterate, I feel bad about this. I hope that others can read these comments to try to better understand the process so that it doesn’t happen again.
Stephen Davies
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