I am going to keep everybody anonymous in this story. A retailer rang me from her business in the north east to say that a company offering a newspaper and magazine delivery service had convinced her husband to sell them the store’s home news delivery list.
She maintained that her husband was unwell at the time and unable to resist the offer. Once she discovered the sale she put a note in the shop’s window saying that home delivery was once again an option and many of her old customers took up the offer. There then ensued an angry exchange between her and the company which said it had acted in all good faith.
She said: “The company had no right to take my customers without my permission. My business is struggling financially and by doing what they did, they took 60% of my business without my knowledge.”
In a letter she proposed to send to them she further said: “If I am to fall victim to bankruptcy, I believe that you will be liable for it.
“Every one of those customers that you took are regulars in my shop, they are people who I have been sharing my ups and downs with for the last 26 years. They are not just customers to me, they are like family at this point.
“At no point did I knock on any of their doors to ask them to come back. All I have done is put a note in my shop window for new customers, if my old customers see this note and want me to provide this service for them again, then I am not going to reject them.
“I obviously need to keep my business going and I hope you can understand that. This is my livelihood at stake and no-one will dictate to me how I am to run it.
“If my customers want to come back, whether it’s because of their loyalty to us or whether it’s because they are not happy with the service they have received from your company, I am not going to turn them away. This is especially not fair on my elderly customers at this stage in their lives, if they want me to provide this service then I feel as though it is incumbent upon me to do so.
“I have a family of my own that I need to take care of and therefore I am relying entirely on this business in order to do that. My husband has been struggling with mental health issues since last year and he was not in a mental state to be making such an important decision like this. He feels as though he was pressured into making this decision with your agent coming into the shop every other day and making statements about how this deal is ‘now or never’, despite the fact that I told him that we don’t want to sell the paper round.
“I want to end this situation once and for all. I am even happy to pay you back per customer in the same way you did with my husband. I honestly can’t be fairer than that as I have already lost a significant amount of business for the last three months.
You are threatening legal action but I know how and what grounds I am entitled to sue your company. But let’s resolve this matter amicably as opposed to being foolish and letting everything get blown way out of proportion over a paper round.”
I contacted the company and it said that it had purchased the HND delivery rounds in late 2023. “The retailer was paid in full for all customers as per the agreed contract of sale. After the retailer was paid, and approximately three months after the sale, the retailer began delivering to the same customers they had sold to us. We became aware of the retailer’s actions in February 2024 and are simply enforcing the terms of our contract with the retailer to not take back what they had sold to [us].”
The retailer responded to this by saying: “Just to update you a bit on this company they told my husband that they will pay for each customer on the list regardless [of whether] they go to them or leave them for any reason. Then they paid us a lot less because some customers went to other newsagents and some stopped getting papers delivered at all. And [they] didn’t keep their word.
“Now they are asking for £250 for each customer who came to us. Whereas they only paid us £120 each. And this contract they printed themselves got no legal binding no consent of mine with that they are trying to scare me. We have got 13 customers back but they are saying 18. Maybe they are watching us we have got 18 customers so far but other five never went to that firm. They came back when they saw the notice of me starting the service again.”
In the end, as it was looking like it was going to go legal, I referred her to Lawyers for your Business which will give a free half hour’s advice on the phone and to Citizen’s Advice which will give free legal advice to sole traders, and they are good on contracts too.
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