Invoice from work done years ago I bought a house in 2013 in Ireland, all well and good. Before everything went ahead, I got a structural survey (recommended, not mandatory). Conversation with the surveyor went as follows: Me: I want a survey on my house please Him: No problem, it costs x. I will do it, then send you the invoice, and release results once payment received So it was delayed by 2 weeks or so before he actually got back to me and said he was doing it in the next few days. So I thought grand. Another week elapsed and I followed up and he said sorry there was a delay, I will send over the survey asap. Another week followed, and I eventually got the survey. Even though he didn't mention any payment, he sent me the survey. So I emailed him and said can I have your bank details please and I will transfer the money for the work done. I never heard back. 5 years later, he has now emailed me and said he was going through his accounts and noticed I never paid him for it (which is true). So he resent me the invoice, and his bank details. To be honest, at this stage I had forgotten all about it, and I know it's not a huge amount of money, but I'm not currently in a position to pay it. Is it still legal to send invoices this long from the past?
I know it's not a huge amount of money, but I'm not currently in a position to pay it. Is it still legal to send invoices this long from the past? Yes, it is legal. And the surveyor is still within the statute of limitations to sue you for breach of contract. Beyond the purely legislative aspect, personally I would encourage you to pay the surveyor once you are in a position to do so, even if the statute of limitations had expired. From your description, it seems that the surveyor acted with nobility in that Even though he didn't mention any payment, he sent me the survey. and there is no indication that the survey was faulty. Thus, it would be opportunistic not to honor your part in the contract under pretext of the statute of limitations. Consider this: You would not wish to be deprived of compensation today (or once the debtor becomes able to pay you) simply because years earlier you were too overwhelmed to send an invoice for work you actually performed.
No A debt is created by a contract (among other ways not relevant here). A contract for a restaurant does not contemplate the creation of a debt, payment is to be contemporaneous with the service. Presuming that the customer was made aware that cash payment was not acceptable and that they chose to enter the contract, by ordering, then they accepted that term. Not abiding by it is a breach of the contract. Now, if the customer did not pay and the restaurant sued for the amount (plus damages) and won, that would be a debt for which cash must be accepted.
We don't want this issue to adversely affect our credit and got legal consulting which suggested we should pay the debt collector to protect our credit score, and then sue the landlord for the money back in small claims court. I'm a little worried about this strategy since it requires to hand away the money first, and am trying to get second opinions. The debt collector is probably either the owner of the claim against you, if it is an assignee of the claim, or an agent of the landlord for purposes of collection. Thus, payment to the debt collector is equivalent to payment of the landlord. The law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction regarding whether payment constitutes of waiver of a right to sue over the debt. Sometimes it is necessary to designate the payment "under protests" or "reserving all rights", but that is not a uniform rule of law that applies in all jurisdictions, and I do not have the time and familiarity with that state's law to research Massachusetts case law on that point accurately.
In short, because the government is not required to honor your characterization of the transaction. A gift is something given without receiving anything in exchange. In almost all taxable contexts this is not a plausible argument. A judge would almost surely rule for the government that your money transfer was rent and not a gift, for example. And, if you didn't report the income that was found to be rent and not a gift, on an income tax form, you would be assessed serious penalties and might even be charged with criminal tax evasion, since the sincerity of your gift would be in doubt. Also, while in the bare example of an informal roommate arrangement, proof of the existence of a lease in the event of a dispute between the parties might not be necessary, usually contractual documents are in place to protect the rights of both parties to a transaction and those would be inconsistent with a gift characterization. For example, if you sell lumber on credit and it was treated as a gift, you couldn't sue someone who failed to pay for their lumber, and if you sold lumber for cash, it would be a clear quid-pro-quo.
Yes, this is a valid concern As written, every piece of IP you produce while employed belongs to the employer. This includes your hypothetical game. It also includes your weekly shopping lists, your Christmas card to your Great-Aunt Nellie, the … a-hm … private video you make of you and your significant other. As written this is overly broad and probably unenforceable. However, it’s always better to have clear and legally enforceable clauses in your agreements because unclear, arguably unenforceable ones lead to disputes. To be fair, the employer has probably lifted some (bad) boilerplate and hasn’t actually thought through what it means. Get it redrafted.
The retailer You can try making a subject access request under Articles 15(1) and 15(3) of the UK GDPR. Provide as much information as you can (your name, date of purchase, store you purchased it from, copy of the receipt, etc.) and ask for the serial number. If they still have it, and it is stored in a way which is linked to you in an identifiable way, then they are obliged to provide it without undue delay (and in any event within 30 days). You may want to provide a copy of your passport in the request to pre-empt them coming back with an ID check request under Article 12(6), which then allows them to delay processing the request until you have replied. As stated above, if they no longer have the data or you are not identifiable from the data then they do not have to provide it. If they do have to provide it but refuse then you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office or ask the County Court for a compliance order under section 167 of the Data Protection Act 2018. The insurer Regulation 3(1) of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 prohibits &quot;unfair commercial practices&quot;. Regulation 3(4) provides that a commerical practice is unfair if, inter alia, it is listed in Schedule 1. Paragraph 27 of Schedule 1 contains the following item: Requiring a consumer who wishes to claim on an insurance policy to produce documents which could not reasonably be considered relevant as to whether the claim was valid, or failing systematically to respond to pertinent correspondence, in order to dissuade a consumer from exercising his contractual rights. As you've provided proof that you purchased the item, you can try to argue that having the serial number of the lost item can not &quot;reasonably be considered relevant&quot;. Yes, the contract says that you must provide it, but consumer rights legislation overrides contractual provisions. You may also want to consider dealing with the insurer by email/post instead of by phone, (a) to avoid continuing to waste time on hold, and (b) because if they systematically fail to respond then this may also cause them to be in breach of the above provision, (c) to acquire evidence which you can use later. Escalating If you get no results from the insurer, make a formal complaint to them through their complaints process. Under the FCA Handbook rule DISP 1.3.1R, the insurer is required to provide a complaints procedure. Under rule DISP 1.6.2R they are required to provide a final response to a complaint within 8 weeks. If you are not happy with the response, you can escalate the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service which has the power to make financial awards pursuant to section 229 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (&quot;FSMA&quot;). Doing so is free of charge and is therefore a good alternative to going to court. The ombudsman can also make awards that are not strictly based on law (i.e. they can go further than the courts can) because of section 228 of FSMA which provides that: &quot;A complaint is to be determined by reference to what is, in the opinion of the ombudsman, fair and reasonable in all the circumstances of the case.&quot; You must generally escalate a complaint to the Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving your final response from the insurer (rule DISP 2.8.2R).
There are two &quot;cancellations&quot; here. There is a contract between the customer and the company. This contract was ended. Also, as part of GDPR obligations, the data of the former customer was removed. Now the &quot;credit&quot; part suggests a pre-paid phone, which are often described as &quot;no contract&quot;. Legally this is incorrect. There is a contractual obligation for the phone company to deliver phone services (typically expressed in minutes of call time, # of text messages and/or MB of data). Now the pre-paid contract with high likelihood had a clause which dealt with inactive accounts. For instance, the minutes of call time may expire after 5 years. A &quot;credit&quot; that has not been converted to minutes, messages, or megabytes may also expire. When this happened, the company might need to keep the customer data on their records for two more years (for legal reasons), so the 7 year period does not sound weird at all. As soon as the legal reason to retain the data has ended, the GDPR indeed states that the data should be removed. That act is not connected to the credit expiring years before.
This has very little legal effect. It means that someone forgot to update their annual registration and pay the fee and could be resolved in half an hour with a small late fee payment. It is a sign of slight sloppiness, but is only sometimes evidence of something more serious. For example, if a company moves to a new location without remembering to inform the Secretary of State, it might not get the annual report notice and thus fail to file. And, a company rarely has an occasion to double check that it is in good standing. Usually, the only legal consequence is that the company can't commence a lawsuit without bringing itself into good standing and that another company can steal its business name (if it can do so without violating a common law trademark arising from use of the name). It does not significantly change the rights of parties dealing with the company in terms of property ownership, contract rights, etc. This said, closer scrutiny than a company without that issue might be in order and the fact that you are checking at all means that there might have been other reasons apart from this fact to be concerned.