Hidden Fees from a letting agent, are they legal?

pinkshoes

Dear <letting Agent>,

Having checked with the three tenancy deposit schemes, I have confirmation that our deposit is NOT protected. It was a legal requirement to protect our deposit, and as you have failed to do this, we are legally entitled to claim 3 times the deposit amount.

Please return our FULL deposit to us within 7 days from receipt of this letter, otherwise we shall start the small claims procedure to claim 3 times our deposit, as per our legal entitlement.

Kind Regards,

<you>

G_M

As pinkshoes says.

Forget your 'long letter' - my guess you are letting off steam. The more you write the more complex things get and the more there is for them to come back at you and argue over.

KEEP IT SIMPLE!

1) they didn't protect your deposit as per Tenancy Deposit Protection Housing Act 2004
2) the admin fee is not in the tenancy agreement
3) if you don't get your deposit back in full within X days you'll go to court.

...and found out that most LAs should be registered with one of:...

Sorry. No.
Anyone can set up as a letting agent. No training needed. No qualification. No professional standards. The bodies you mention are all voluntary.

Poco_money

Sorry I couldn't get on the forum again sooner. Thank you very much pinkshoes!

G_M, I said should be registered if they're respectable but isn't a legal requirement for letting. So, I know they can set up, but from what I read, many are pushing for this to be a legal requirement like with EAs and it's recommended to use an agent which is registered. I just posted it because I found it interesting, I hadn't read about these bodies anywhere before, thought it could help someone else avoiding similar problems with agencies...

My letter was a bit long probably but more long as in it took me a while to read the legal background before I could type it - if I didn't know what I was talking about I'd feel like they could tell I didn't know what I was saying .

Apparently, the last phone call I made to them, before I posted on here, where I lost my normally very polite tone must have worked because £25 turned up in our bank account yesterday. Woop!

Now it's all settled, should I report them still? Should I do anything about them not protecting the deposit?? I got it back, so all is settled and they don't owe me anything really, so I'm thinking just to leave it, but it means ignoring yet another company getting away with illegal practices. (My partner is a law student - he is so passionate about law that it's brought out a pro-justice side in me ha )

princeofpounds

Now it's all settled, should I report them still? Should I do anything about them not protecting the deposit?? I got it back, so all is settled and they don't owe me anything really, so I'm thinking just to leave it, but it means ignoring yet another company getting away with illegal practices. (My partner is a law student - he is so passionate about law that it's brought out a pro-justice side in me ha )

Probably not worth it I'm afraid. I agree, you should really get the 3x penalty. The legislation was meant to be that way but contained errors which put a hole in the law and the government is no longer interested to go back and correct it, so the main way to get the penalty now is only if the LL is so blind as to not make moves to pay you back to get out of the penalty. If you are interested, look at nearlylegal blog posts that are tagged with 'tenancy deposit' for a history of this sad mess-up.