Help!! Tenant paying for repairs?

Dudgeon

Our apartment (in London) is managed by a lettings agent on behalf of our landlord. This week we returned home in the evening to find that there was no electricity - only the heating and lighting was working. All of us work from home and have urgent deadlines, so we urgently required electricity not only for basic amenities (e.g. cooking, fridge), but also to use our computers and internet.

We contacted our lettings agent telling them that we urgently needed an electrician, but they told us they did not consider it an emergency and could only send someone the next day. We were left with no option but to call an emergency electrician ourselves. In the end it turns out that there was a fault with the landlord's fusebox, preventing the electricity from being activated again. Although the costs were much higher than if we had waited until the next day, we paid for the repairs ourselves and handed in the invoice to the lettings agent. However, they are refusing to reimburse us for the repairs - they say they did not consider it an urgent request and that the costs are far higher than if they had sent someone the next day.

Where do we stand legally? Are we entitled to be reimbursed? It seems rather odd that we should be forced to pay for a repair to the property itself.

Thank you for any help you can give!!!

HappyMJ

Legally you can file a claim in the county court for the money back. I'd consider that an emergency on the basis that if not fixed within X number of hours the food in the fridge would have been ruined but I'd give them one last chance in writing before starting the claim maybe offering to pay part of the emergency call-out fee yourself but all the parts and labour the landlord should pay for. If you do claim then claim the whole amount and let the judge work it out.

Here's the linky https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome

Dudgeon

Thank you so much for your helpful response, and for the link!

angrypirate

Just take it out of next months rent. Getting money out of an LA is like getting blood out of a stone, but even harder.

silvercar

If there was heating and lighting then there was some electricity. I think you'd be hard pushed to say it was the sort of emergency that couldn't wait until morning.

You could go to court and you may win, but the judge may decide that you acted too hastily given that the letting agent had agreed to send someone the next day.

With holding rent puts you in breach of your tenancy agreement and is not recommended.

sequence

I'm not a legal expert, but I think you need to send a "letter before action" before you start a court case for the money. At least, it should help your case.

Planner

Dudgeon wrote: »

lettings agent....but they told us they did not consider it an emergency and could only send someone the next day. We were left with no option but to call an emergency electrician ourselves.

Although the costs were much higher than if we had waited until the next day, we paid for the repairs ourselves and handed in the invoice to the lettings agent... they say they did not consider it an urgent request and that the costs are far higher than if they had sent someone the next day.

Hmmmm my view unfortunatley differs to the other posters so far on here. You say you had no choice - when you obviously had the choice of waiting until the next day?

In a nut shell, the question is 'did you act reasonably in getting the problem sorted there and then rather than waiting until the next day?' Im tending towards no you didnt, you should have waited (IMHO)

Would you be willing to go 50/50 or ask the letting agents to pay the usual cost of what their next day call out would have been with you paying the balance?

BitterAndTwisted

I think you were being a tad premature: if you had heating and lighting overnight who's to say that the agents wouldn't have been able to get an electrician round before noon the next day?

I'd negotiate with the agents and agree to share the cost: what would seem reasonable to me would be for the landlord to bear the cost of what the agent's normal contractor's charge would be and for you share the cost of the balance between you all.

terryw

The nature of the fault is important as well. If it was merely a fuse, then this is the responsibility of the tenant, and the nature of the beast with "emergency call-outs" (according to some consumer programmes) is that sometimes work is done which is not necessary.

moromir

I'm afraid I'm on the 'this isn't really an emergency' bandwagon.

You had light and heating and the LA could make arrangements for someone to attend the very next day.

Food will be perfectly fine in a sealed fridge and freezer overnight.

As far as actually eating goes, a sandwich isntead of a cooked meal one night isn't going to kill you.

You can buy USB internet dongles for £30 including £15 worth of net which can tide you over in an emergency. I sometimes have to work from home and I have one of these lying around just in case, as I live in the country and things like electric and phone lines can be a bit dodgy in bad weather.

Plenty of places offer free or pay-per-use Wi-fi, coffee shops, service stations etc, if it was really that urgent to use the net, laptops can be taken and used there. Some libraries are often open till 8-9pm and have free net access.

If its desktops, are there no friends or family relatively near that would put you up for an evening to do your work?

And if all that fails - it would be a very unreasonable employer that doesn't appreciate 'these things do happen' from time to time.

If I'd got your bill in as a Landlord, you would be reimbursed for the costs of the parts plus business hours labour and we'd be having a bit of a talk about what actually constitutes an emergency.

Dudgeon

Thank you for your replies. I am thinking of asking the landlord for cost of parts plus business hours labour, as some of you suggest. A further question then: can the landlord refuse to pay that as well, or does he have a legal obligation pay for the repairs (at normal costs)?