DEAN DUNHAM: Is it legal for my hairdresser to charge me if I miss an appointment?

I wasn’t able to turn up for my haircut last week and now my hairdresser is charging me for the missed appointment. Is that legal?

E.M., Manchester.

Dean Dunham replies: To be able to enforce this, your hairdresser will have to prove you were informed, prior to or at the time you made the appointment, that you would be charged if you failed to show.

The Consumer Rights Act says key terms, such as penalty clauses like this, must be made prominent to the consumer, prior to the contract being formed.

This means you either have to be expressly told you will be charged, or it needs to have been contained in terms and conditions and brought to your attention.

Cut it out: Is a hairdresser legally permitted to charge a client if they are forced to miss an appointment? 

So, if your hairdresser remained silent about this penalty charge pre-booking, they cannot now force you to pay. 

If you were informed of the ‘no-show’ penalty at the point of making the appointment, you should ask your hairdresser if they managed to fill your appointment with another customer.

If they did, there has been no loss to them and in these circumstances, it is unfair to charge you as it will leave your hairdresser over-compensated.

Waiting nine weeks for sofa delivery

I ordered a new sofa and was told it would be delivered within six weeks. It has now been nine weeks and still no delivery. 

I’ve told the retailer I now want to cancel the order, but it said I’ll lose my deposit if I do.

G.W., Cambridge.

Dean Dunham replies: It is important first to establish whether the retailer gave you a ‘confirmed’ or ‘definite’ delivery date or if it was an estimate, as the law treats the two scenarios in very different ways. 

If you were given a confirmed date, this will have formed an important part of the contract between you and the retailer, and its failure to deliver on this date will amount to a breach of contract.

The effect of the breach of contract is that you are entitled to cancel the contract/order and demand your deposit back.

Retailers nearly always provide estimated delivery dates when it comes to purchases of furniture.

If this is the case with your sofa order, there will be no breach of contract for the estimated date being missed, as it will not have formed a term in the contract between you. However, that does not mean the retailer can fob you off with new estimated dates for ever.

Under the Consumer Rights Act if goods are not delivered within the estimated timeframe, the default position becomes that the goods must be delivered within a ‘reasonable amount of time’.

What is reasonable will depend on the particular circumstances. In your case, nine weeks is, in my view, nearing the limit of what will be classed as ‘reasonable’. And if there is still no sign of the sofa by week 12 (double the estimated time) this would clearly not be reasonable. That would leave you, the consumer, in the position of being able to cancel the order and demand a refund of all monies paid.

When the delivery of goods is not made within the time estimate given, my advice is to tell the retailer that you will treat the contract as at an end — if the goods are not delivered by a certain date.

If the retailer says it cannot guarantee the specified date, this gives you the opportunity to say that you cannot reasonably be expected to wait any longer without a definite delivery date.

Then you can cancel the contract and demand your money back.

• Write to Dean Dunham, Money Mail, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB or email [email protected]. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given. 

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk