End of Contract Fees

climbgirl

As someone above said, it's not a legally enforceable clause, regardless of whether or not they used professional cleaners before you moved in.

If you clean it well enough yourself (and you can hire steam cleaners from some supermarkets for about £50), there's no way they can prove who's done the cleaning or not.

I've never hired professional cleaners at the end of tenancies, even though it states it in the contracts. I know I clean well myself (better than some "professional" jobs I've seen, frankly!) so I just clean it properly when I leave and they can assume it's been done professionally if they want. Nobody has ever challenged me on it.

BitterAndTwisted

Stop obsessing about non-existent problems and don your Marigolds!

How you achieve that clean state is not enforceable, you've already been told that. Your responsibility is to return the property in exactly the same state of cleanliness. The landlord is not entitled to expect you the achieve that in any particular way. If your tenancy agreement said you had to do the cleaning while you were stripped naked with a banana behind you ear, would you feel obliged to?

matty_art

Slight thread hijack, but I fancied a quick moan that I spent all weekend cleaning a flat that I moved out of, sent my grandfather up today to hand over the keys and be there for the inspection (because I was in work) and I find out that the letting agent has charged £30 for professional cleaning because "they found a hair in a drawer, a hair on the bathroom wall and the light switches were dirty" (they'll probably have to clean the whole place after they repair the hole due to a leak in the roof, which has been there for 14 months with no action from them and cost me many hours of my time trying to resolve when it was leaking!)

Not much I can do I suppose for that amount of money, but I'm now definitely put off ever using that letting agency again, which is probably worth more to them than £30! Why do these letting agents never see the bigger picture that providing good customer service to tenants as well as landlords is in their longterm interests?

BitterAndTwisted

I agree that charging a tenant for two stray hairs in two different rooms is so trivial as not even worth mentioning But a charge for cleaning the light-switches if you agree that they were dirty seems fair. As far as I know it's not possible to engage a cleaner by the minute and I expect that £30 reflects their minimum charge.

Still, you'll get your satisfaction as I daresay there are few tenants who'd be prepared to take a property on with a hole in the roof!

matty_art

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

I agree that charging a tenant for two stray hairs in two different rooms is so trivial as not even worth mentioning But a charge for cleaning the light-switches if you agree that they were dirty seems fair. As far as I know it's not possible to engage a cleaner by the minute and I expect that £30 reflects their minimum charge.

Still, you'll get your satisfaction as I daresay there are few tenants who'd be prepared to take a property on with a hole in the roof!

Yes, I guess my main problem with them is that they were totally disinterested in helping to sort out the roof problem, basically leaving me to deal with the management company and their subcontractors, taking many hours of my time, and stress when twice it didn't get resolved and I came home to water pouring through the roof! Tempted to invoice them based on the hours I spent and my client charge-out rate as an accountant, which would be far more than the £30!

I know "this is no excuse" but the flat was much much cleaner than when we moved in, and the light switches were an oversight. For them to say that the new tenants wouldn't move in without them clean is somewhat of a joke, and I'd bet good money on them not employing a cleaner (well actually they probably will have to, to clean up after they fix the hole in the roof!). Am I allowed to request them to send me the invoice as audit evidence?