united-kingdom
Deposits repayments UK
<p>Simply put, on what grounds can a company refuse to repay a deposit? What criteria give them the right to do so? I had an incident where a company refused to repay my deposit, with reasons I was not informed of either verbally or in writing.</p>

<p>In general, if you entered a contract and then, without reason, repudiated it (e.g. cancelled the order other than in accordance with the terms of the contract), the other party is entitled to:</p>

<ul>
<li>keep whatever you have paid them</li>
<li>sue you for damages</li>
<li>seek an order for specific performance (i.e. require you to fulfil your obligations - presumably to pay the rest and accept the delivery of the goods or services)</li>
<li>etc.</li>
</ul>

<p>Alternatively, if you cancelled the order in accordance with the terms and those terms said that they can keep the deposit then they can keep the deposit.</p>

<p>There are <a href="https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/" rel="nofollow">Consumer Law</a> protections that may apply, however, you have not been specific enough with what you bought and how you bought it to see if this would help (different things have different protections), however:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>You don’t have an automatic right to get your money back if you just change your mind about something you’ve bought and there’s nothing wrong with it.</p>
</blockquote>
