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Quote: Originally posted by Surfer01 on 28/3/2012

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The same thing has happened with Norton motorcycles. Deposits taken but no m/c!

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Could it be possible to give the company this sites address and sayto them to  look at what is  being said to thousands of campers etc.

 It not look good for your company for this long delivery, as it seems to look like a winter delivery and not even summer to the customer.

Just a thought, can only try and see if they  'can/will'  give an answer.

Silver Lining comments "then the law of estoppel will again prevent them from going back on it."

I am afraid not. What is said before a contract is signed is one thing and what goes into the contract is quite another in terms of what rights folks have. In this case, whatever was said before contract about delivery, the OP agreed to something quite different afterwards in the contract. Stealth can quite reasonably argue, as time is not of the essence, that, pre contract, they were talking about delivery being "about" so many weeks rather than a finite delivery date.  Prooving the verbal statements made is difficult

"Estoppel" is a cause of action in equity and not in contract law. Thus, if you proceed with a cause of action in equity, you cannot rely on the Unfair Contract Terms Regs to support your action as those Regs relate exclusively to contract based actions.

To deal with an action based upon estoppel you really need no intervening event from the representation (e.g. that delivery will be x weeks) such as a contract, as that contract changes everything. Rather estoppel tends to work the other way around.

You have a contract first, followed by a dispute. The party claiming damages may say, "I have decided to let you off"   and then they change their mind. They can be stopped from changing their minds, under the equitable principle of estoppel, if the party being let off takes action, to their detriment, based upon that promise to let them off. e.g they should pay damages, but having been told they will be let off they spend the money that would have been paid in damages. So they don't have the money, then, to pay the damages and it would be inequitable to require them to find that money having spent it because of that promise to let them off.

Apologies to anyone still awake, but estoppel is quite a complex issue to hang your hat on, in this case, so I thought I would just set out, broadly, how it works.

Actions brought in equity are so much more difficult to proove in court than actions in contract. So, OP, take the easy route and stick to contract law rather than equity.

Blimey, I never thought I would get involved in equity matters on this board. The last time I did, many moons ago concerned equitable estoppel by representation where a client was overpaid by their employer and the employee could not have known. The over payment went on for many many months and the employer then tried to recover it. The argument there was that as the employer represented to the employee that the employee was entitled to that monthly salary, by delivering the salary cheque and pay statement they were estopped from denying the details in that pay statement. In any event the employee had spent the monthly salary so it would be inequitable to expect the employee to pay the money back as it had been spent in reliance on the details, or employers representation in the pay statement. Happy days

Phil