Please help re flat deposit

clutton_2

"Will the card that was left for her say who had sent it?" - not usually.

i would not send her a copy of what you plan to claim - let the court do that.

EagerLearner

Thanks Clutton - we won't enclose court forms in letter #3, I will just file the claim in my lunch hour as i'm lucky to have the court house 3 mins away.

UPDATE 10/08/06:

Letter #2 is going out today to landlady and also agent, but this time I will save the cash and send it 1st class but get proof of delivery.

Letter #1 to her & to agent (with 2 letters enclosed to agent) cost nearly £9 to send. S*d that for a bag of biscuits!

clutton_2

the best technique i ever came across in a verbal negotiation which seemed to be in a state of total impasse was - party A owed the other party B some money. Party A asked very quietly and politely, "are you going to pay me this money please ?" Whatever party B said - party A just repeated this question and said NOTHING else !!!! We must have asked this question about 8 times. (Stay calm !!)

Eventually Party B ran out of excuses, and started getting very flustered and waffling, and finally we said "we shall ask you one more time are you going to pay me this money please ?" - more waffle

At that point we stood up and said "in that case we have no alternative other than to issue you with this country court summons" and headed for the door.

By the time we had got to the door, he was on the phone to the Managing Director. !! We got our money.

The other thing you can do is to issue a Winding Up Order against her company - this is actually fairly straightforward, and stops her trading, stops her getting credit - great fun for the b******s of this world who try to screw the little folks !

i know someone who issued one against Norwich Union - he had the MD on the phone that next morniing and money in his account that afternoon !!!!

EagerLearner

Tx Clutton - he he - it's actually called The Broken Record Technique, much used and loved all around the world - used in particular for people who are low in confidence - obviously not you tho!

Sadly, last time I used the BRT with this lady was when we called to ask why she had canceled us extending the contract (see much further back in this post) - basically she said you can extend if you pay me an extra £60 per month (for nothing). Then she said go to agents & sign at 9am tomorrow - then at 08:30 TEXTED to say she'd let it privately, we couldn't extend. I calmly called her and tried the Broken Record Technique with the question:

Why have you gone back on your word?
Waffle - your fallen through purchase nothing to do with me etc
Why have you gone back on your word?
I have been so nice to you - really understanding - waffle
Why have you gone back on your word?
Starts losing temper and shouting - I'm so understanding
Why have you gone back on your word?
Starts getting really hysterical, I have to put the phone down.

She clearly felt guilty and so had no answer so she got hysterical. She was so unprofessional you wouldn't believe it.

Still she might have an answer when she gets letter #2!

pavlovs_dog

ive just read through this from start to finish - what an eye opener!

eagerlearner, i wish you all the best :beer:

EagerLearner

Thanks Pavlovs-god - it's becoming quite the soap!

UPDATE

Just went to post office at lunch and posted letter #2 to agent (including
one copy c/o landlady) and one to landlady. Got proof of posting for both. Nice to not have spent £8 again. This way it'll get straight through the letter box, hopefully making them panic about the previous (#1 special delivery) letter and get off their bums to collect it. Neither of them work apart from managing their little empire of 4/5 properties, so no excuses to ignore our #1 letter.

Quite relieved it's done - ball in their court now.

EagerLearner

OooOOoooh - I have 3 STARS!!! That has made my week! :j :j :j

I don't know why I have them though - did I pass a threshold of some sort? My stats don't seem to show any sort of passing of barriers...

wizzkid_3

V interesting read, keep us posted! Wish you all the best.

EagerLearner

Hi everyone,

We notice our 1st letter (via Special Delivery) has not even been collected from the sorting office by the landlord, so hopefully letter #2 has been received as we sent that by 1st class mail last week.

We will be sending letter #3 this week with 'Notice Of Court Action' at the top if nothing is heard in the next 3 days. Should we also say 'Without Prejudice'? I have seen this on legal letters before.

The court fee is a small price to pay to make this landlord aware of how tenants can fight back if their deposit is witheld like this for no reason.

In letter #3 should we now state we want the full amount back (£625)? It has now been 9 weeks since we left the property, 5 weeks since she was due to refund our deposit and still no breakdown of proposed costs.

Many thanks everyone for still reading this post!

black-saturn

I wish you all the best. I'm glad you are fighting it and I hope you win your deposit back. Too many landlords get away with things like this and usually if they have hold of your money it also means that they have hold of you by the short and curlies. So lets hope someone wins this time.