Return of deposit advice please

lemontart

A friend paid a deposit to agents and is now after end of tennacy 7 days ago chasing repayment of it, they said the landlord prefers to deal with himself, yet no paperwork regarding the secure scheme paid into received and agents claim they have no record as not part of what they do for him.

Managed to trace which company has it -so know protected

My questions are

1. Is the agent who took the money off the debit card responsible for paying it back or the landlord who they then passed deposit onto (so they say)
2. is the 10 days they have to pay it back 10 working days or 10 days regardless of weekends and bank holidays?

Many thanks

BitterAndTwisted

It is the landlord's ultimate responsibility to authorise the return of your deposit. You should expect some slight time-lag in the agent communicating with the landlord and the landlord acting. If the agent only fulfilled a tenant-finding service and not the check-out you may need to wait until the landlord has inspected the property themselves to double-check all is OK. Meanwhile get onto the deposit-protection scheme's website and claim the whole of your deposit back right now. Ten days is not a hard-and-fast rule but a guideline. Real life intervenes and things may not necessarily be as straightforward as you think.

lemontart

cannot claim it back via their site as 1. ll never supplied documentation and 2. it appears to be an insurance scheme and they state it is up to him to pay it back,

called mydeposits the scheme he used

BitterAndTwisted

Your friend needs to contact the scheme by phone to enquire about how they may claim their deposit back but you are correct MyDeposits is not a custodial scheme but one of the two insurance-based ones.

Still, doesn't change anything yet. The tenant will need to wait for someone to verify that the property has been left in the same state as it was at the start of the tenancy, regardless of which party they physically paid the monies over to.

Was there a dual-signed inventory at the start of your friend's tenancy?

lemontart

sorted at least I hope so landlord agreed to pay deposit back as flat fine - no explanation as to why paperwork regarding scheme not provided as required then offered a cheque, suffice to say that was turned down in favour of debit card refund from agents with the cheque from landlord going to them - landlord has shall we say a laid back attitude to the letter of the law beit turning up unannounced 3 times not meeting building regs on some issues and the appropriate paperwork, threat of legal steps if paperwork not produced today to start with seem to do the trick will know if worked Monday.

lemontart

update full deposit returned though he wanted to do by personal cheque which of course was declined in favour of pay back to card used to pay for deposit from estate agents ,

Thanks for the advice folks