Another Landlord story
I'm sure the qotw will be full of these by the end of the week.

Note to Coventry people beware of a lettings agent that rhymes with "Gluewood" since it is run by my ex-landlord.
Anyway back in 2007 Mr C-S and decided do get on the property ladder since we neither qualify for social housing and were sick of loads of our money going to someone and seeing no return from it.

So we got a house put an offer in blah blah all well and good and all we had to do was wait while the wheels turned.

We had our suspicions about him since he seemed a bit of a wheeler-dealer - he had let slip about a cluster of interest-only mortgages and that he owned four cars. We had to re-seal our bathroom since the cheap 10-thumbed prostidroids he had paid to do it had just put new sealent over old with the result that the kitchen had a novel water feature above the cooker. That and the fact he kept calling me 'sweetie'.
There were some issues with the house. Like the 9 months he took to replace the rotten front windows and only got the job half done. Same with the kitchen window and door only he didn't think about repairing the lintel.

Now just as we had got our offer accepted we came back one night to find we had been the subject of an attempted break-in. Fortunatly the door held so we did the normal police/insurance and contact the landlord

No response. So I kept on contacting him with Mr C-S even though we gently reminded him that should there be a subsequent break-in he would be liable.
We come back from work again to find that there has been some action from the landlord. A To-Let sign. Still no repair. Cue more phone calls to Landlord's office. In fact the window would remain broken right until we left 6 weeks later.

Cue large numbers of prospective tenants coming to view the property. This is what you would expect but we hadn't even got a moving date and our landlord seemed a stranger to fact that they must by law give 24 hours notice to current tenants. It wasn't unusual to come back from work and groan at the lettings agency peon "who are these people and what are they doing in the house!?" They didn't tend to stick around long after that.

Now we finally got a date and since we had paid up for the last month we had agreed with the landlord that if he letted out the property before then end of month he would refund us the difference. We cleaned up the house well and made good any wear-and- tear confidant we would get our deposit back.

The end of the rental period approached and we awaited our landlord to contact us to inspect the house, check the inventory, hand back the keys and get our deposit back. The last day came, still no call so Mr C-S and I went to the house to check things out. We go to the house, open the door and find a surprise all right. A large pile of other peoples stuff and the kitchen window is still broken. We feel it is best to leave quite fast and just has we are out of the door the new tenant's car pulls into the driveway. No doubt he's wondering what the he'll is going on. So we explain who we are and point out the defects like the broken window and the sagging brickwork above the kitchen door and the half-finished work. We also express our concerns that we cannot get hold of him, that there has been no inspection and we still have the keys to the house.

Now we start phoning to demand our deposit back and the rent excess which was £700 in total. We were greeted with various excuses like he's on holiday, he's in India having surgery, his third grandmother has died etc and by the end of May (we had moved in April) we started on the letters. These were polite and to the point as it was clear to us that he was a stranger to returning deposits - he had in the past only rented to recent immigrants and students who did not know better.

Finally just in time for our July holiday we get our deposit back but not the excess and we finally hand back the keys. Although Mr C-S is satisfied with this I was not since we were still £100 out of pocket. So August came and so a new letter campaign started along with phonecalls. By now were where such frequent callers to the office we were almost on first name terms with the staff.

One day, a surprise - the landlord phones ME. Says he is in a meeting and then pours an impressive rant about how we are naughty ungrateful tenants and that we have mad him cry by colluding with the new tenant and encouraging him to leave without notice. (in reality his son had bought him a house). So since we were such naughty children we didn't deserve the £100 "goodwill" money*
He did not call me 'sweetie' once in that exchange.

That might have worked if I was 5 and didn't have a rangy dad but that was not going to wash with me. After the threat of the Small Claims Court went unneeded I decided one last letter with the big guns: my brother the baby barrister. He wrote a very polite, concise and above all very threatening letter with all the above points outlined such that if he it did come to the small claims court he would most likely lose and that we did not take kindly to defamation of character by insinuating we were demanding money we were not entitled to.

Next week the landlord contacts Mr C-S and hands over the £100. Result!

So the moral of this is check out the law, know your rights and be persistent.

*Words are different if not the content or the tone.

edited to correct spelling and wierd line breaks. The perils of posting from a mobile device...
(Cockroach-Sombrero Cook Pass Babtridge, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 22:10, 3 replies)

A leggings agent?
Is that where you rent lycra based legwear?
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Fri 3 Sep 2010, 7:54, closed)

I found
that the most effective phrase possible in a letter to the agent when trying to reclaim my deposit was something along the lines of :

Do what I want you do in accordance with the contract which btw works both ways and is legally binding or

'nominate solicitors to receive proceedings'.

They paid instantly.
(Foxinsockssir, Fri 3 Sep 2010, 10:58, closed)

I've never bothered with the phonecall/letter/visit routine
Some of my previous employers have been a bit tardy with things like holiday pay, P45s, references etc. They get one phone call, and if they do the out of office/we'll call back later/he's on holiday, they get a fax at 0800 the following morning. The fax takes the same format: A small claims case will started or HMRC will be informed, and they have 5 working days to comply. No correspondence will be entered into, and phones calls will be politely refused.

Wins currently standing at 4 out of 4. Quickest response was a courier in 90 minutes with my P45.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Fri 3 Sep 2010, 12:57, closed)