Companies taking advantage and taken money for nothing...advice please

[cremeggsrock]

Hi all

A close family friend has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he is is 82 and lives alone but has daily domicilary care and one of us goes to visit him daily. Yesterday, he thought that he had locked himself out of his house and a neighbour called a Locksmith... this neighbour does the bare minimum and he pretty much called the Locksmith and left C to deal with it. C never asked him to call a locksmith and managed to get in to his house round the back. Next thing he knew, a locksmith appeared on a callout and charged him £90. C paid it in cash as he was flustered, having just spent the day looking after his neighbour who is very elderly and was sent to hospital. It's very obvious that C suffers from some sort of dementia when you speak to him so the locksmith shoud have been able to tell a mile off that all was not right

My mum called the locksmith today to explain that C has Alzheimer's and that he did not call the company to come out. The company were very rude to my mum and basically said there is no cancellation policy and that the caller was made aware of this at the time - which was obv not C and C has not signed the 7 day cancellation-waiver on the invoice.

Anyone know whether there is any way to get this money back? I'm digusted and appalled that this company did this... £90 is shocking by any standards but to charge an old man with alzheimer's for doing nothing is beyond belief!

Thanks in advance x

Does anyone

[jude50]

I'd complain to Trading Standards and see what they say. I did it when a phone company phoned up and spoke to Mum telling her they were BT and the next thing we knew the phone account had been passed to another company. they would have known by the telephone converation thst mum had dementia but the sales person still did the deal probably thinking that she wouldn't know any better. didn't bank on me living with her though so it was straight to the company, ofcom and trading standards and the account wasn't transfered but I was so so annoyed with them.