$6,200 kitchen deposit recovered from a $200 card payment
The installer took a deposit, missed three start dates, then dissolved the company. The provider initially refused because only $200 of the $6,200 had gone on the credit card, which is precisely why the claim worked.
Client: A couple in their sixties who had paid a deposit for a fitted kitchen
$6,980
Total recovered
$200
Card payment that triggered liability
11 days
To reverse the initial refusal
What the client brought us
Our clients agreed a fitted kitchen for $6,200 with a local installer. They paid a $200 deposit by credit card at the showroom and transferred the remaining $6,000 a fortnight later, at the installer's request.
Three start dates passed. The installer stopped answering. Two months later the company was dissolved and re-registered under a similar name at the same address.
They approached their credit card provider, which declined on the basis that the card payment was only $200 and therefore below the $100 threshold. That reasoning is wrong in a way that costs consumers a great deal of money, and it is among the most common errors we see.
How we assessed it
Section 75 requires the cash price of the item or service to exceed $100, not the amount paid on the card. The cash price here was $6,200. A card payment of any size, provided it forms part of the transaction and the debtor–creditor–supplier chain holds, exposes the provider to the whole contract.
We assembled the order documentation, the payment records for both the card element and the transfer, the correspondence showing three missed start dates, and the public record of the dissolution and re-registration.
We then put a written Section 75 claim to the provider setting out eligibility explicitly — cash price, card element, unbroken supply chain — and quantifying the loss as the full contract value plus the cost of quotes obtained for having the work done properly by someone else.
What we found
The $100 threshold was applied to the wrong figure
The provider tested the card payment rather than the cash price of the contract. Once that was corrected in writing, the substantive defence disappeared.
Dissolution treated as ending the claim
The first response suggested pursuing the company. Section 75 liability is the provider's own and does not depend on the trader still existing.
Consequential loss initially excluded
The provider offered the contract value only. Because its liability mirrors the trader's, the cost of remedial quotes was also recoverable.
No written specification
The agreement was largely verbal. The showroom order form and a text message confirming the layout were enough to establish the contract terms.
How it was fixed
The provider reversed its position eleven days after receiving the written claim and paid the full contract value of $6,200. It declined the remedial element; we referred that part to the Financial Ombudsman, and the provider settled before allocation, adding $780 for the difference between the original price and the lowest replacement quote.
Total recovered was $6,980, of which $780 would not have been claimed at all had the clients accepted the provider's first offer.
We also suggested they report the trader to Trading Standards, which they did. That does not recover money, but the pattern of dissolving and re-registering is exactly what enforcement teams need reported to them.
Business result
- Full contract value of $6,200 recovered despite only $200 being paid by card
- A further $780 recovered for the difference in replacement cost
- Claim succeeded although the trading company had been dissolved
- Clients recovered more than the provider's initial offer by not accepting it
“We had written the money off. Nobody at the bank had mentioned that a $200 deposit on a card could cover the whole thing.”
Clients, Glasgow
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