Please help re flat deposit

tomstickland

I'd not bother sending anything.
Did they bother telling you that they'd received the other letters?

EagerLearner

I just wanted to run the text past you all anyway as then I'd have something ready if Mr EL agreed to it later too. Spoke to him at lunch and he's undecided but I will mention what you've said. I'd only be able to type it tomorrow lunch anyway as I have to use pc at work. I'm certainly leaning towards not doing anything re responding.

UPDATE 16:09 13/09/06

Also at lunch I picked up a Special Delivery item, which was in fact a letter returned by the landlady from 3rd August. I believe this must have been our letter #1.

This time, rather than saying 'Gone Away' the reason ticked for returning it was 'Not called for', dated 4th September 2006.

Surely this will look very bad in court.

So can she now claim she never had any warnings? I am sure she can't as certainly the 3rd letter we were savvy enough to send recorded and also 1st class. Plus for sure the letting agent would have spoken to her about all these?

aderbyshirelad

Hi eagerlearner,

I've been away on holiday and my memory isn't that great at the best of times and if I scroll through the whole thread my boss will probably dispense with my services! However, the LL and the LA clearly know about the legal action. The letter from the LA we've been talking about today made no mention of the fact that your dear old LL had no idea about the legal action, otherwise I'm sure they would have tried it on.

To me, its pretty obvious that both LA and LL have both received notice of the court claim. As I say, I can't remember the ins and outs and the timeline of events exactly, but I wouldn't worry that LL from hell is going to try and plead ignorance.

I really feel sorry for you that every little development in this sad saga piles on more worry and stress about "what's the right thing to do". But, this stress and worry is one of the major reasons you should see this through to the finish. You can't let her get away with this. It's just a bit goading that when someone has cheated you that you then have to go through all this to get justice - but you will get justice!

Try and relax. Don't worry about replying to the LA's letter. Let the courts do their work and wait until you hear from them.

Hang in there.

musey

IMHO (and past experience) this is a tactic used to try to get you to stop court action, if you do so I fear that you will find yourself back in the situation you were several weeks ago. I reckon your LLady will suddenly become uncommunicative again and you will end up having to start again.

In the circumstances you have described in this thread I can see no reason why you shouldn't be comfortable taking this the distance. Attending and representing yourself in court isn't bad when you get in there doing it (the worst thing is what you'll build it up into before you get in the room (at least thats what did....I was imagining lots of legal bods wearing wigs and "M'learned friending" everyone lmao how wrong I was!!)

If you n Mr EL feel in the interests of looking fair to the courts you need to respond to the letter from the LA. I would advocate a very short & to the point "without predjudice" letter stating something along the lines of "in view of the lack of communication and past uncontactability of the LLady you will only withdraw the CC summons on receipt cleared funds to the value of £705 being your deposit in full and the court fees otherwise you feel that pursuing the matter through the courts is your only option."

In saying that, none of us here know the stress this matter has caused you so maybe putting it to bed before court could be a blessing to you, however were it me I would make the b*tch see me in court. I would certainly not withdraw the summons until you have cleared funds in your account (bear in mind cheques can be stopped after they have been paid in so I would only be accepting a bank transfer or cash), if you withdraw now you will probably have to start again.

Good luck with it.

Kinnairdy

Hi EL, been following this thread all the way too, as a former Landord I am disgusted and appalled by the manner in which this woman has behaved. Please DO NOT respond in any manner whatsoever, doing so will only 'prove' to your former LL & the LA that you are a soft touch and have no real intention of following through with the Court process, they know you have the Law on your side and are trying to manipulate you into making some form of contact which they hope to be able to use in Court against you.
I work for a Lawyer, albeit in Scotland but he is qualified in English Law, who would advise very strongly against your making any further written or verbal communication with these people.
Please do not allow yourselves to be manipulated any more. You must start thinking with your head and not your heart, these people want to avoid paying what they owe and will try every trick in the book to make you relent, you sound like a very nice person BUT your LL is'nt, her goal is to screw you out of your money in any way she can, don't let her!.
All the best, and as has been said before Court hearings are not the scary scenario everyone imagines, go and enjoy, knowing full well you have the Law on your side, the LL may not even attend if she is as stupid as she sounds.

EagerLearner

Hello everyone,

Thanks so much for the extra posts and support - we're not going to write anything - the way I see it that's another hour of our time spent talking about it between us & writing it in front of a pc monitor and plus the time & cost of posting etc. I figure if we allow £11 each per hour of our time, that's at least £22 responding to the letting agent 'sneaky-delaying-tactic' letter.

Nuh-uh - we're learning, as you can see!

Today is her deadline for having responded to court action so I guess we will receive something from the courts either way next week.

Good news today is that our new Dell pc is being delivered tomorrow, I guess we hope to be back to normal re the pc in a week's time (once we've connected it all up, tried to figure out how to install broadband again bla bla).

Total cost of new pc £322 - so I hope we get at least that from this case. The way I see it, SHE caused the PC too much stress with all the letter writing and form filling, he he!

EagerLearner

Also - is it likely that when someone gets a court summons date, they become more flexible and offer to pay up then rather than go to court? ie - could she suddenly see the light want to pay up when she gets that summons letter?

Mrs_pbradley936

Yes, she might just decide to pay up. She was hoping to enter into debate with you so could tell the court you were settling out of court, but by not responding (thank goodness) you have not given her that opportunity. As I understand it the agents have given a defence, but so far the landlady has not. In that defence they claim to have nothing to do with it but you have a recent letter from them asking for a negotiation on behalf of the Landlady. They seem to have a problem deciding if they are involved or not.

Mrs_pbradley936

Just to echo everyone’s feelings I went to a small claims hearing years ago and it is nothing to worry about. Somebody was suing me for the price of a pedigree puppy. A young couple with two small children were neighbours and the husand had bought a puppy for hundreds of pounds. Anyway it was chewing everything and wetting everywhere as pups do and the wife wanted to get rid of it. My own children were young at the time and saying “Can we have him mum? Oh please, go on”. In the end I said we would have him. So he came to live with us. About two weeks later I had a letter from the husband asking what financial proposals I had. I wrote back and said none. He wrote back and said I was now in possession of a valuable pedigree dog which had cost so much and he wanted that amount from me. I wrote back and told him he had better make an appointment to collect his puppy. He wrote back saying he did not want the puppy but was out of pocket and was going to issue a court summons. He did, we went and the court agreed with me. We had the dog for 12 years.

EagerLearner

Hi Pbradley - that's a great victory! Plus, I am really jealous that you got a puppy, even if it was 12 years ago... we'd looooove one, but in Brighton there's just not enough space... we are renting a 1 bed flat with a small garden, but we'll only get a puppy when we own our own place which is too hard as first time buyers (Mr Blair, can you comment on this!??)

Anyway, I am not worried about going to court so much as just want this to end.

It's great we finally got her *real* address, or we wouldn't even be at this stage. At least now she can't ignore us!

The letting agent e-mailed us and also told us on the phone a while ago that they were nothing to do with it and that we had to deal with her direct. I guess she has forced them back into it, because they still collect rent for 2 other properties of hers. Ha ha - at least they have more work to do now...