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Multiple problems with letting agents

24

Comments

  • Adamr
    Adamr Posts: 8 Forumite
    If you had any sense you would contact the agent and ask them to send someone round to put the heating as a matter of urgency if none of you are close enough to do it yourselves.

    The old senseless tenant situation :spam: Do you read all the post or just skim over and make an assumption that best suits yourself ??
  • Having ages to fix is doesn't suddenly magic the landlord into giving consent for his money to be spend or for the necessary part to be conjured up by magic as well.

    If you have been explicit in your emails to the agent that you would be leaving the heating off just keep your fingers crossed.

    It all may be a different story if the pipes burst. Thousands of pounds worth (maybe tens of thousands) of damage to the property and the landlord's fixtures, thousands of pounds worth of damage to your own possessions and weeks, maybe months of misery for you all.
  • Adamr wrote: »
    The old senseless tenant situation :spam: Do you read all the post or just skim over and make an assumption that best suits yourself ??

    Yes, you are absolutely correct: I skim-read the posts and made an assumption that best suited myself.

    Do you have any suitable advice or an opinion about the OP's situation or do you register on forums just to be a smart-@rse

    No spam, numpty.
  • Having ages to fix is doesn't suddenly magic the landlord into giving consent for his money to be spend or for the necessary part to be conjured up by magic as well.

    If you have been explicit in your emails to the agent that you would be leaving the heating off just keep your fingers crossed.

    It all may be a different story if the pipes burst. Thousands of pounds worth (maybe tens of thousands) of damage to the property and the landlord's fixtures, thousands of pounds worth of damage to your own possessions and weeks, maybe months of misery for you all.

    Yeah we've been explicit that the heating wouldn't be on unless they gave us a new thermostat or allowed us to have someway of putting the heating on for a couple of hours a day without having it on 24/7 whilst we were away.

    Also, it may be that the landlord isn't budging but that's not really our problem - we signed a contract with a letting agent not a landlord!
    "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" - Winston Churchill
  • No, you signed a contract with the landlord with agent acting as the landlord's, erm agent.
  • G_M
    G_M Posts: 51,977 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Your tenancy agreement will (should) have an address on it for the serving of Notices on the landlord. This is where you should wrie. If it is c/o the agent's address, so be it, but that is why you should be writing letters. If the address is different (ie the landlords actual address) then send a copy to the agent.

    Ask for a gas safety certificae to be forwarded withing 5 working days. If you don't get one. contact HSE or Environmental Health at the council.

    To provide the GSC the LL will need to get the boiler inspected, so the thermostat issue will be flagged up.

    Smoke alarm - is this an HMO (house of Multiple Occupation? If not, smoke alarm is not required. Go to B&Q and get one for £5 (or £15 for combined smoke/CO alarm).

    Deposit - is it registered in a scheme? Have you checked? Which one? Did you sign an accurate check in inventory - this is the base point required for the LL to justify deposit deductions.
  • clutton_2
    clutton_2 Posts: 11,149 Forumite
    OP - its no good repeating your self over and over again.. we have got the picture... you have come here for advice, and people are giving it you, but because you dont like it, you repeat your original problem over and over again.

    Ww have heard stories like this hundreds of times, and we generally know what to do WRITE letters.. this is the proper way to acquire a case for a court case in the future if it gets that far. Emails can be "invented" - and i am not saying you wold do that, but your agent might !

    Regardless of what your landlord does about repairs, you have to act in a "tenant like manner" - and if i was in that position, i would have bought a small thermostatically controlled heater and left it in the house over christmas to keep it all from freeziong... and why should you ? why indeed... to prevent the LL from putting in a claim for thousands against your parent (who are probably your guarantors) if the pipes freeze and flood the property.

    its called taking responsibility for your own actions - and its all part of learning how to live apart from your family.

    Do what i have suggested and what G_M have suggested, we have both been landlords for a long time and understand your situation.

    Moaning wont solve anything... action will.
  • Ulfar
    Ulfar Posts: 1,309 Forumite
    edited 18 December 2011 at 10:38PM
    I have some sympathy for the OP in that I would not go away and leave my heating on 24/7 not only from the costs but the fire risk.

    Given that the heating system is faulty, it may not be the thermostat that is broken but something else, how is the tenant to know they aren't a heating engineer. This also links in to the lack of gas safety certificate. The OP didn't state it was a gas boiler, it could be an an immersion heater or electric heating neither of which I would leave on 24/7.

    You can use the acting in a tenant like behaviour, but I would counter argue that the landlord should be attending to his legal responsibilities.

    The risks cut both ways for the tenant leave the heating off and the pipes burst or leave the boiler on and end up with a fire.

    I have moved into a property before to discover the gas safety certificate had run out over a year ago, when the new inspection had been done the boiler had been condemned and the supply turned off, the landlord had just turned it back on.

    When I purchased my new house the heating element in the immersion heater had corroded and would have been a fire risk and showed exactly the symptoms the OP is describing. Fortunately I was fully aware there was a problem and had budgeted to replace the central heating.
  • olly300
    olly300 Posts: 14,738 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Ulfar wrote: »
    I have some sympathy for the OP in that I would not go away and leave my heating on 24/7 not only from the costs but the fire risk.
    The issue with the OP is that they didn't attempt to sort out the issue before going away for Christmas.

    If they or their housemates have anything in the property if the pipes burst their own stuff will be damaged as well as the landlord's. They will also not have anywhere adequate to live plus face the possibility of being sued by the landlord.

    The OP should have sent letters by recorded delivery to both the letting agent and the landlord at the beginning of the month informing them that they were going to leave the heating off as they don't have a working thermostat over the Christmas holidays. They should have also made sure all their housemates removed their personal belongings from the property if it isn't fixed. (I'm sure they have mates in the area where they can dump stuff for a few weeks.)

    I always point out to the younger people in my family that while they are concentrating on their studies they still have to deal with household problems in the properties they rent. The excuse they don't have time doesn't wash as they won't have more time when they start working.
    I'm not cynical I'm realistic :p

    (If a link I give opens pop ups I won't know I don't use windows)
  • Ulfar
    Ulfar Posts: 1,309 Forumite
    olly300 wrote: »
    The issue with the OP is that they didn't attempt to sort out the issue before going away for Christmas.

    Which they did, the original post states this was bought up at least a month ago plus they have been raising the issue of the gas safety certificate from the start.

    When I moved in to my latest house, I had the old system boiler and immersion heater taken out and a new combi boiler put in, took two weeks from getting a quote to having the work completed, this was in October.
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