Want to end tenancy early - terrible letting agent

Awful, awful landlord.

Bickering over a hob is stupid. I guess my partner and I are very lucky with our landlady. There's trust there, so if I call and say something is broken - then that's enough, and they'll replace it. Our boiler packed in, and because it was quite old - she didn't even want to make any attempt to fix and we got a brand new boiler. Same with the washing machine. Our aerial started playing up, so she asked if I minded finding someone local and trustworthy, getting the work done and just sending her the bill. I did exactly that, no problems.

It does sound exactly they've just got a mate to come round and poke at the 'problems'. Hope you get this sorted :/
 
Yeah it's really disappointing :( Our old landlord was fantastic - any problems and he'd be over within a couple of hours to sort it, or if it wasn't something he could do himself, get someone in within a couple of days.

We'd have loved to stay there, but unfortunately it was just too far from my work =/

Like I said - current landlord is completely blinkered on saving/making money in the short term and not thinking about future implications :( However isn't it a ~£5k fine for breaking the gas regs.? ;)
 
Impersonating a Gas Safe Engineer must be worse than that surely?

And anyway, did you not get a copy of the report when they done the inspection? Thats what happens, 3 copies, one for the engineer, one for the agent (or landlord) and one for the tenant.

My landlord is excellent. I even have the gas bloke on my phone, owt goes wrong, I just ring him and he pops straight round (smetimes late at night if he has a lot of jobs on). My diaphragm went last year I think Xmas eve or the day before, he was round in about half an hour to repair it!
 
No Gas Safe card should mean bye bye go away!

Get onto Gas Safe and enviro health. Write to the agent so they know you are doing this and refuse permission for anyone else to enter without prior approval from you. Also contact your council's Tenancy Relations Officer. The business with the hob is probably enough to work on. The rest is just the usual broken promises (we never said that!) and mucking about. The hob could be getting into illegal.

As PhillyDee said, there should have been three copies of the Gas Safe cert. The tenants copy isn't always left, but most decent gas folk do give it to the tenant there and then if they are in. If not, it will go to the agent/landlord.

There is very little you can do to terminate the agreement while you are in the fixed term.

You could be a right royal pain the the jacksie, to the extent that the LL and you agree a mutual surrender. This is probably the best solution.

Google "lee parker vs izzet" and follow that process. Basically:
1 - write to LL/agent requiring the repair be done. For gas applicance, the LL must do this under his S11 repairing obligations. Give them a "reasonable time" - perhaps 14/21 days to start moving
2 - when they don't bother, get three quotes and send them to agent/LL
3 - after another "reasonable time" arrange the repair yourself, send the receipt to agent and deduct the amount from rent
4 - receive retaliatory section 21 and get evicted at the end of the fixed term (optional, but common)
 
Whats with all these dodgy landlords....Mine lives in spain and doesnt respond to emails until weeks later.

We asked for a replacement kettle and he told us no sorry, the kettle is good enough when infact the kettle is horrendous, covered in limescale and literally doesnt boil water. Yet the landlord was that much of a tight ass he wouldnt skimp up £20 for a kettle.

Also our roof now leaks....not looking forward to trying to get this sorted.
 
[Students y0]

One of the places we looked at needed work doing to it, and the agent said it could be done before we'd move in. Knowing that estate agents are just glorified salesman we told them we wanted it written in the contract... but they refused. So we walked and found another place.
 
grumpysculler said:
Google "lee parker vs izzet" and follow that process. Basically:
1 - write to LL/agent requiring the repair be done. For gas applicance, the LL must do this under his S11 repairing obligations. Give them a "reasonable time" - perhaps 14/21 days to start moving
2 - when they don't bother, get three quotes and send them to agent/LL
3 - after another "reasonable time" arrange the repair yourself, send the receipt to agent and deduct the amount from rent
4 - receive retaliatory section 21 and get evicted at the end of the fixed term (optional, but common)
Click to expand...

And are we allowed to bill them for all the extra/different food we've had to buy, considering we are unable to cook anything except in the oven? I doubt it.

Finding out from the bank if we can reverse the payment made for the deposit, and if so we're out of there ASAP and they can go **** themselves.

Oh yeah. CAB useless as always...
 
Westyfield2 said:
[Students y0]

One of the places we looked at needed work doing to it, and the agent said it could be done before we'd move in. Knowing that estate agents are just glorified salesman we told them we wanted it written in the contract... but they refused. So we walked and found another place.
Click to expand...

Ahh, nice bullet dodge there - well done :)
 
Xire01 said:
Whats with all these dodgy landlords....Mine lives in spain and doesnt respond to emails until weeks later.

We asked for a replacement kettle and he told us no sorry, the kettle is good enough when infact the kettle is horrendous, covered in limescale and literally doesnt boil water. Yet the landlord was that much of a tight ass he wouldnt skimp up £20 for a kettle.

Also our roof now leaks....not looking forward to trying to get this sorted.
Click to expand...

A kettle?
Was probably just left by old tenants tbh.

Nowhere I've stayed have things like kettles and toasters been suppleid as part of tenancy.

GL OP hope you get it sorted ASAP, most HA and LL are absolute Scum :(
 
Instead of Phoning the agency, go to their place and ask them what on earth they are playing at. Was it written in the agreement that all of the things you've mentioned would be done, then you would move in, or was it verbal?

If they don't act swiftly just move out and find another place. Lettings agents like that are simply not worth the hassle.
 
Xire01 said:
Whats with all these dodgy landlords....Mine lives in spain and doesnt respond to emails until weeks later.

We asked for a replacement kettle and he told us no sorry, the kettle is good enough when infact the kettle is horrendous, covered in limescale and literally doesnt boil water. Yet the landlord was that much of a tight ass he wouldnt skimp up £20 for a kettle.

Also our roof now leaks....not looking forward to trying to get this sorted.
Click to expand...

Not sure if serious.......
 
Make them wish they hadn't been born :)

The actual owner of the house might be interested to know what a bunch of idiots their agent is, as they are presumably paying them a fee to deal with all this.
 
dottty27 said:
is this with Goodchilds?
Click to expand...

It isn't. I don't really want to name and shame here, because while the agent's haven't been great, they aren't completely to blame. (and I've seen how threads end up like that in the past).

Vita said:
Instead of Phoning the agency, go to their place and ask them what on earth they are playing at. Was it written in the agreement that all of the things you've mentioned would be done, then you would move in, or was it verbal?

If they don't act swiftly just move out and find another place. Lettings agents like that are simply not worth the hassle.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the carpet cleaning and the rubbish removal were both verbal agreements. We've gotten to the stage where we would love to move out, but unfortunately we're tied in for 6 months now, unless we can be so difficult the LL agrees to a mutual termination (which we're getting tempted to do).

PiKe said:
Make them wish they hadn't been born :)

The actual owner of the house might be interested to know what a bunch of idiots their agent is, as they are presumably paying them a fee to deal with all this.
Click to expand...

It was the landlord who didn't want to accept the original inspection and insisted on their own "engineer" and who is now dragging their heels. I do understand that the agent's hands are pretty much tied when it comes to repairs if the landlord says no.

We'll see how they react when they are investigated by the council for not doing repairs and by HSE for (what looks like) failing to comply with gas safety regulations (having just reported them to both. :D)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom