Legal Position on Old Repairs

[alxfer]

As a continuation from 'Old Repairs' thread, does anyone know the legal position of clearing out uncollected repairs. I keep them for a year (have about 5 pairs), but one from last November is a pair of almost new ladies cowboy boots which I reheeled. It still has the £75 sticker attached. I worry about getting shot of them and the owner turning up with their year old ticket. I have a policy notice displayed at the counter saying that we will dispose of footwear not collected within the year. I also date stamp the tickets. What's your thoughts guys and gals?

[ironplanet uk900]

If your policy is there for customers to see, and the ticket stamped with the date. They wouldn't have a leg to stand on I wouldn't have thought.

[Perplexus]

There's acres of information on this subject at http://www.tameside.gov.uk/tmbc3/tsfact ... t31.htm#t1

but to quote the most important paragraph

 

'An obvious solution to avoid the difficulty is for the traders to incorporate a simple term in their conditions of business allowing them to sell if goods are not collected after a reasonable (and clearly stated) period and they should take careful note of the name and address of the customer.'

 

I would think that a simple notice in the shop would fulfil this.

[Perplexus]

Second thoughts . . . just found even better information on the correct procedure to be followed at http://www.cambridgeshire.net/advice/se ... _Goods.htm

[keithm]

I used to take customer phone numbers rather than addresses. If you have any repairs uncollected, maybe 3 months, you can call them. Why wait a year

 

You'll be surprised how many people just 'forgot' to pick them up!

 

A good use for those that are still uncollected is for display repair, ie, welted shoes showning different stages in the window.

 

Keith

[Guest shoe lab]

LOL HAH! my garage over the years has collected about 30-50 pairs of stuff that was never picked up . Our tickets say that we are not reponsible for shoes left over 30 days. In reality we wait for about 6 months to a year to take them out of the shop, then they go to our house . Whats funny is that one time a lady left 2 louis vuitton large bags. We re dyed the leather and the handles and a year and a half passed and she never showed up. After so long the "gucci/ louis vuitton on nike air force" work started getting popular, so my dad considered the bags abondoned so he used one of the bags to put the LV on the nike signs/strap/ toe. The other bag he used to make stuff out of out(wallet for my mom!). Turns out that on the 2nd year the lady shows up demanding the purses! My father told her "its been to long we got rid of the bags". The lady got pissed off and took us to court. My father went to court and she lost(duh). But its funny how many people leave there stuff? Then there was one guy who brought 4 pairs of salvatore faragomos brand new in the box for some sole protectors and guards, one of our workers took the shoes and did them. The guy was supposed to come the same day so after a couple of days we called him, and it turned out he died! Our worker eventually sold them for 600$ for the 4 pairs.

[3D Group]

For the last 25 yaers we have gave a discount of around 10% for customers to pay in advance. 95% of customers do Which leaves 5% paying on collection. Out of this only a couple a year get left about 4 for 6 months. But have a guess what? The ones left are always the ones who havn't paid. No wonder they just forget.

[elfman]

last i heard you had to keep them for 6 months and then you had to write and inform customer that they were ready for collecting and give them 7 days to do so if they then failed to collect you were legaly allowed to sell them to reoup the cost of repair, if however you could get more then you could only deduct the cost of repair and forard the balance to the origanal owner

[Hugh-Candoit (ENG)]

Quite right elfman, you also have to prove that you made every effort to contact the customer and that could mean putting an inexpensive Ad in the local papers. Could be 1 Ad listing several pairs of shoes. Name and ticket number is the most important part.