Whether it is £5 a month or £500 a month is irrelevant: Standard Life, the client and the adviser have a lawful contract based on offer and acceptance at time of inception. Standard Life has chosen to alter the terms of the contract to the detriment of the adviser, with no apparent benefit to the client (perhaps even detriment as advisers may not wish to service and inform clients of such loss of service), but with an obvious benefit to itself. Do advisers have some remedy they can pursue under contract law? But that is another question for another day.
I am left wondering though what Mr Hazell’s opinion would be if I having ‘contracted’ him to write a regular piece for a publication where he had had more than 10 years of contractual payments, whereupon I then decided (to improve my cash flow) to change the payment terms to my benefit, his detriment and with no obvious benefit to his readership?
Would his response be ‘ouch’ and one of outrage? Would he say: ‘Well I’d had 10 years worth of payments’ and ‘it’s only £5 a month’ and would his ‘tone of comments’ on future reductions of his contractual payments be similar for every article he wrote, and would he then decide he would ‘never give’ me any ‘future’ articles unless I pay him what he is contractually due?
I am just asking, because I wonder what his reaction would then be if all the other publications he seeks to publish articles in offering contractual terms then decide to stop or reduce paying on a whim what he expected to get paid?
Andy Baxter
Principal
Wealth Management
Co Durham
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