Previous letting agent charging for reference

Eskimo12345

I'm moving out of my current rented property which I rent through EvilCo and moving in to another property via NiceForNowCo. Myself and the OH paid £300 to NiceForNowCo for all the usual fees, and they subcontracted WeCheckYourTenantsCo for the background checks. I received a call from WeCheckYourTenantsCo saying EvilCo needed my approval to give them a reference; I called EvilCo who said they wanted £24 to give a reference. I called WeCheckYourTenantsCo and told them that, they said they don't pay the fees, so I called NiceForNowCo who said they don't pay the fees either.

Now the easy way to get around this is for me to bend over and pay EvilCo myself. However, I look at it this way - if I ordered a telly from Comet, I wouldn't expect some guy in china to tell me he wants paying to put the telly on the boat!

Now I know that EvilCo can charge for a reference, I'm just wondering the best way to go about this without paying for a service that I haven't requested - or if you consider it to be indirectly requested by myself, then a service for which I have already paid for (the £300). My contact at NiceForNowCo is going to talk to her boss to see if he will ok the payment but I'm expecting the answer to be no.

Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this?

Annabee

Gosh I think we must have used the same agencies since the same thing happened to me and the amounts seem almost identical. I also had to pay EvilCo £24 which I thought was rubbish! Honestly most Letting Agencies are such blatant bloodsucking parasites. Didn't think of asking NiceforNow to pay though.

What I did consider doing was demanding a £24 'viewing fee' from EvilCo every time they wanted to send a new prospective tenant round. Didn't have the gumption to go through with this in the end, though, maybe you could give it a try. After all, tidying up and making yourself available involves a lot more effort than completing and posting a simple reference form, and the time of us tenants is valuable!

G_M

Tough one.

But I'd rename NiceForNowCo as NicebutexpensiveCo. £300 is quite a lot, even at £150 pp. Not sure WeCheckYourTenantsCo actually are but most of these services cost £25 - £50 (depending on extent of checks). The rest is made up of NiceForNowCo's 'admin' or 'overhead' fees and/or profit.

So negotiating on their £300 fee is definately an option.

If you can get to talk to the landlord (hard at this stage!) you might find he doesn't know his prospective tenants are being charged so much, and either going elsewhere (so he loses a prospective good tenant AND rent as it takes longer to fill the property) or starting out their tenancy p*ssed off so less inclined to look after his property. Remember, HE's paying NiceForNowCo too! To find him a tenant.

A better option, of course, is to bypas EvilCo completely and get your reference from your previous landlord, who probobly won't charge a fee.

Eskimo12345

I've double checked my invoice and it was "only" £240.

The fees never seem fair but I've found there's not much difference between them & we really wanted the place, also the nice places round here so fast that if you spend time negotiating or asking questions, someone else will drop their application in first - happened to us four times in the last few weeks Still, we've found a great place now and will hopefully move in soon!