Legal Question in Consumer Law in Texas

My wife and I needed to have our garage door fixed. I called Company A on a Saturday at 9 AM and set an appointment for between 10 AM and 12 pm that day, and waited for 2 hours until they called me and cancelled the appointment. They asked if I wanted to reschedule and I told them I'd get back to them. In the meantime, I called Company B, scheduled and appointment, and they came out the same day and did the work that was required. Company B was going to come back out to our house the following Monday, so we were expecting a call from them. Well, Company A called my wife on Monday. She saw the number on her phone, called it back, and Company A asked if she was home and if they could send a tech out to our house. My wife, who was uninvolved in the appointment setting process, said "yes" thinking it was Company B - she isn't clear in her recollection of whether the person on the phone identified themselves as being from Company A - and when the tech arrived my wife saw that it was not Company B and told them that we did not need their services. Company A wants to charge us for a service visit, claiming that we had an appointment for Monday because we did not cancel our appointment for Saturday (for which they did not show up). I explained to them that what they did was basically make an unsolicited call to my wife, since we had no appointment scheduled with them for Monday, and they had no reason to call us since our agreement for service was cancelled when they failed to show up for our scheduled Saturday appointment. Do we owe them a service charge for coming to our house?


Asked on 11/23/09, 6:33 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Mark Dunn Mark D. Dunn

Don't pay them a service charge. In fact, you should send THEM an invoice for the time you spent on Saturday sitting around waiting for them when they didn't show up. How much is your time worth? $25 an hour? Send them an invoice.

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Answered on 12/02/09, 3:35 pm


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