Deposit return nightmare ADVICE NEEDED

fanflabulous

dancingfairy wrote: »

If you haven't got in touch with the deposit people andthe 3 months has lapsed then it seems likely she has claimed the whole lot of the deposit back herself She may have even intentionally led you on so you ran out of time to lodge an appeal :eek:
What evidence do you have about the state of the property at the begining of the tenancy and atthe end? do you still have the check in/check out reports?
You'll need some sort of evidence if you want to take the landlord to court.
df
Edit: not too sure whether you can serve papers at the actual house or whether you need a proper address for her - do you remember what the address for serving notices was on the tenancy agreement? Are you able to get the details from land registry?

I believe she was stalling as she stopped responding after exactly 3 months of the end of our tenancy. I don't think this is just coincidence.

We have an inventory. We checked it off with her and everything was agreed on inspection. She said on that day that she'd be fine to give us the whole deposit, she also saw the carpet cleaners arrive. She then said that she was deducted for this and that, including carpet cleaning. We sent her the receipts for the services we paid for and asked for hers. She dismissed our receipt and refused to send hers. I have all this in dated emails.

Hopefully I've managed to sort out the address issue as My Deposits said that it will be on the certificate they are sending me. I've included in the court action notification letter that we were unaware of the time limits because we didn't receive this paperwork. This was on the advice of the lady from My Deposits.

fanflabulous

martinsurrey wrote: »

Also even if a tenant does get the deposit back in full, they are still liable for all normal damages that the deposit covers so could find themselves the loser of a small claims court case and a CCJ, if they don’t give the LL forwarding details.

I don't think we'd lose because we left the property in a better state than we found it. She charged us £160 for carpet cleaning that we'd already had done and sent her the receipt for. She charged us £180 for cleaning and when questioned said it was because "there was a coke bottle and newspaper under the bed which needed removing, the oven hadn't been cleaned, there was dust under the fridge and it hadn't been defrosted". We'd cleaned the oven 3 days before moving out and hadn't used it afterwards, I can't move a fridge because I have health issues and the fridge didn't need defrosting as our electricity was paid until the 5th, which was after the new tenants were due to move in. I even told her it this in person, whilst at the house, and she didn't asked me to defrost it then, but charged me for it after? Also, she paid for these services (apparently, though hasn't provided receipts) without contacting us. She says she didn't have our details because they were different to the ones on the tenancy agreement, but we had both updated her by email and she had contacted my boyfriend on the new phone number only 7 days before claiming she didn't have it. It's all nonsense! She's just trying to take our money for services that landlords/ladies are liable for anyway. We're not required to leave the flat in perfect condition, ready for new tenants, we're required to leave it as we found it, allowing for reasonable wear and tear. Which is exactly what we did. In fact it was more clean as I had scrubbed all the kitchen cupboards which were covered in grease when we moved in.

fanflabulous

Also, (sorry for the masses of info) does anyone know whether we did legally have to pay until the 5th (the official start of our tenancy and end of a rent month) when we agreed we were moving out on the 25th (10 days earlier)? We agreed to pay her the extra 10 days, though we had vacated the property and had ended our agreement on the 25th. She didn't mention this before the move out day though we gave her 7 weeks' notice of leaving. We could have changed the date and moved out on the 5th had we known.