Letting agency refusing to refund locksmith fees - Advice needed

matstheboy

Hi all,

I have been living in a property rented from a letting agency for the last year and have encountered my first problem with them. Basically, when getting home from work last Saturday, i found that my key wouldn't turn in the lock causing me to be locked out of my house. I tried calling the agency and my call was forwarded to a mobile phone due to it being out of hours...all i got was the answerphone of one of their employees, i tried this several times over the following 30 mins and got the same outcome. I took it upon myself to call a locksmith to help me gain entry to the property thinking it would be a simple job and the agency would refund the costs incurred due to them not being able to take my call and send their own person out. I was told by the locksmith that the latch had malfunctioned due to it being a cheap lock that was a few years old, anyway, after 1 hour ish of drilling, he got me into the house and installed a new lock. I then contacted my landlord on the following working day and was told the following...

Dear Matthew

Unfortunately, as I explained to Victoria, the owner of the property can not be held responsible for payment of this invoice, the fault was not reported to us or permission given to carry out this repair.

Please see the relevant section of your tenancy agreement

[FONT=Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial]1 To notify the Landlord or the Landlord’s Agent immediately should repairs become necessary for which the Tenant is not liable for and in no circumstances should the Tenant arrange or give instructions for any such repairs to be carried out except at the written request of the Landlord or the Landlord’s Agent, otherwise the Tenant shall be responsible for the cost of any repairs carried out in breach of this provision.

Victoria informed me that you called a locksmith because you could not enter the house as the door had slammed. You did this without reporting the fault to us. We have a locksmith available at weekends and have agreed fixed terms with him; this has resulted in you making a very large overpayment for which the landlord can not be held responsible.

Please ensure that if you have any future faults they are reported to us so that we can organise a prompt repair.

Please do not hesitate to call if you would like to discuss.

[/FONT]Kind regards

Could anyone advise me on whether I have any rights here? Firstly, she insinuated that I locked my keys inside, which is completely untrue and secondly, In my opinion, the situation was a little more urgent than just leaving a message and waiting!

Any help you could give me would be massively appreciated as I don't have much money and a £117 locksmith's bill has left me incredibly short.

Many thanks in advance
Mat

halibut2209

Legally you could probably get the money back

Practically, they could evict you ASAP if you did.

Liam002

I understand you want your money back, but how about you to tell them to refund you what it would have cost them with their locksmith.

Have the locksmith you hired explain what he did, and have the agency's locksmith give them a quote for the work he would have done.
Then, explain them you had no choice other than to call a locksmith yourself, otherwise you would have been locked out for who knows how many hours. But that you understand the situation, and that the fairest for everybody is that they pay the portion they would have otherwise paid if you had been in touch with them in the first place.

mynameisdave

You say you contacted the LL on the following working day. Do you mean the owner of the property, or the lettings agency that manages the flat for them? If you had the LL's details but had not stored the details in your phone to contact in emergency situations then it would be unreasonable for them to foot the bill.

Hintza

mynameisdave wrote: »

You say you contacted the LL on the following working day. Do you mean the owner of the property, or the lettings agency that manages the flat for them? If you had the LL's details but had not stored the details in your phone to contact in emergency situations then it would be unreasonable for them to foot the bill.

But the OP called them at the time and they didn't answer.

mynameisdave

Hintza wrote: »

But the OP called them at the time and they didn't answer.

As I understand they called the lettigns agency and as it was out of hours the call forwarded to an answer phone.

If they also had the number of the landlord (not the LA) and did not call that then OP would be liable.

Hintza

mynameisdave wrote: »

If they also had the number of the landlord (not the LA) and did not call that then OP would be liable.

Surely that is the point. A landlord hires a letting agency so that they cover the day to day running of a property.

dreamypuma

Your contract is with the letting agency,who's contract you have agreed to abide by.

What does your contract terms say about the provision of out of hours emergency services?

If it doesn't qualify any specific requirements for out of hours, and only any emergencies, then that is what you are required to do.

As such the letting agency should provide that service to you or they are in breach of contract.

The contract may make provision for out of hours emergencies by offering to contact you back within half an hour (or whatever) from notification (by voicemail in this case).

If you can prove that they failed to meet their obligations then you could recover your losses.

As an earlier poster mentions, they may also just make life difficult by ending their contract with you.

arcon5

dreamypuma wrote: »

As an earlier poster mentions, they may also just make life difficult by ending their contract with you.

That may be an option, but unlikely one to be used since the cost of finding a new tenant + void period would by far exceed to cost of the locks. Unless op has been a serial complainer or always making demands I don't think they would have to worry to much about that.

samroo

when did the la return your calls. if it wasn;t until after the weekend then you were justified to arrangeyour own locksmith

Googlies_2

dreamypuma wrote: »

Your contract is with the letting agency,who's contract you have agreed to abide by.

What does your contract terms say about the provision of out of hours emergency services?

If it doesn't qualify any specific requirements for out of hours, and only any emergencies, then that is what you are required to do.

As such the letting agency should provide that service to you or they are in breach of contract.

The contract may make provision for out of hours emergencies by offering to contact you back within half an hour (or whatever) from notification (by voicemail in this case).

If you can prove that they failed to meet their obligations then you could recover your losses.

As an earlier poster mentions, they may also just make life difficult by ending their contract with you.

The contract is not with the agency (they are the agent) the contract is with the Principle (the Landlord).

Its probably an Assured Shorthold Tenancy which if so can not be terminated by a Landord or their Agent.

OP - just send Landlord and Agent a letter before action if you dont get an acceptable resolution take it to court, its a simple process, I dont think you will have a problem recovering your money.