Totally agree with peter on this - Name and shame the agent if he doesn't pay the commission back to you.

oh i will name and shame dont you worry - i dont care if we have to spend thousands ruining their business - i will do it. Its the principle of the whole thing that bothers me more than anything.
Me and my husband run our own business and if we treated our customers like this we would be in court in a flash! It seems bizarre to me that in our line of business something as simple as fitting a new front door is covered by all sorts of government rules and regulations and you have to provide deposit protection insurance to your customers etc... but a trade that involves much larger sums of money etc dont need to comply with anything......
If the agent did the decent thing and opened negociations with us regarding the refund this would be acceptable. I am not unreasonable and even gave them the option of negociating a canx fee but they werent interested - pure greed on their part.

Peter, I hope that you are right. As the man was not in fact a british lawyer, as not member of the Law Society and also not an estate agent, I think it will be hard to make him liable for releasing the money. Trying to hold him accountable to professional standards may be asking too much. A normal person will argue that they only released it because the buyers gave him the ok and once the 40% was paid he was required to pay the commission.

Its all interesting, but I think that Lovesquadsue that you are currently only using the forum to put pressure on the agent. You are not prepared to name as you are using this as a lever. Someone could be using this same agent and have the same problems as you. So I think that its only fair to name the agent. I understand why you are reluntant to name. You fear that this may be the final excuse not to pay. However, I think that the opposite is true. Once the agent is name, you will find that other people will put pressue on them. As no matter the rights and wrongs of the lawyer, there is no excuse to hold on to commission for an apartment that they did not sale.

I wish you the best. Just don't throw good money after bad.

Emu49 is probably right Sue; in your position I would probably set aside the commission as a justifiable loss and set about causing maximum damage to this guy. If you do it well enough he may just return your commission to shut you up. And hey, if he doesn't, just watch others pick up on the story and bury him! The internet is a powerful tool.

__________________
PROPERTY SHOP INC. International Property Brokers
EGYPT REAL - Your One Stop Shop for Hurghada Property

I tottaly upport this opinion Peter its best way

Lovequadsue is clearly thinking of the best way forward. My real concern in the situation is that this agent is probably well known and still selling El Riad properties. It will be a shame that given the choice of agents selling, people may use someone who refuses to return commissionwhen they never made a sale.

Hi Sue - was wondering how things were progressing and have you had any further joy?

Regards

Alison

No joy as yet - my solicitor is still dealing with it although i might need to enlist the help of an egyptian lawyer as well as my solicitor is looking at a case against the lawyer we used but there are questions as to whether this would have to be done in a court in Egypt ... nightmare really!

who was the lawyer in Egypt as tink you should warn all forum members from him
I feel so sorry for your situation and wish i could help you
Regards
GEorge

Hi Sue - really sorry to hear you havent got any further - just a thought but may now be worth having a word with Zeiad??