Can anyone offer advice here, please? My husband and I have been living back in Scotland since 1999. Initially we rented out our flat in Tenerife, but eventually decided to sell it in 2004. We put it in the hands of an estate agent as we were not living in the country and wouldn't be available to do the necessary work. Said agent promised to sort everything for us and we would only need to turn up at the actual sale. Unfortunately, once they realised there was more work involved because of the flat being V.P.O. and having to be declassified, they lost interest. To cut a long story short, we ended up doing almost all of the work ourselves. This involved several flights back to Tenerife, meetings with the purchasers, drawing up extensions to the sale period, etc etc The flat was eventually sold in February 2006, by which time we had incurred considerable costs. As a consequence, we did not pay the full commission of 6600 euros to the estate agent, giving them only 3600. They knew we were unhappy about the service (or lack of it!) we had received from them and, having heard nothing further from them, we assumed they accepted this. Out of the blue, 3 days ago, we were served with a summons issued by a court in Tenerife in July 2007 and asking us to present ourselves to respond to an ordinary action raised by the agent for the balance of commission. Don't ask me where these papers have been for the last 5 years, as we have not moved address and the agent had all our contact information here in Scotland. I know that in this country you cannot raise a civil action to recover a debt without first showing you have taken all reasonable steps to resolve the matter (having had to take action against a builder I know only too well how many chances you have to give them first!). As we have had no communication whatsoever from the estate agent prior to being served with this summons, is it valid? Can we appeal it on that basis? Also, given that 6 years have now elapsed since the sale took place, we are no longer in possession of all the documents and evidence we would need to show that we in fact did the bulk of the work on the sale ourselves. This places us at a disadvantage if we chose to defend the action in court. Do we have any comeback? We would be grateful for any advice or information anyone can offer us as we are worried sick about this. I can't believe the agent made no contact with us at all before this, and for these papers to arrive after 6 years has been a huge shock. Hope someone out there can help!