Rental deposit not fully returned

TheBruce

I was in a rented house for 4 years and left two months ago.

I didnt get a chance to move all my stuff out (family emergency) or give it a proper clean. I got all the things out I realistically needed and agreed with the rental company things would need chucked and the place cleaned.

I just got my deposit back with 293 taken off it.

11 hours 20 mins to a cleaning company and 6 hours to some removal people.

Long story short I have emailed them to say that this is beyond rediculous that there was an hours worth off removals needed and say half an hour to drive round the corner to the dump and unload. There was no furniture being removed, it was all small items / empty boxes that kind of thing.

As for the cleaning it was a small 5 room house and bar the kitchen I had cleaned it. Yet they are charging for nearly 12 hours.

They have come back and told me tough thats the way it is.

So what are my options? I was expecting say 2 hours removal (TOPS) and 4 hours cleaning.

In my eyes this is a scam and theft. I'm in NI in case it makes a difference.

Okydoky25

Never one to be on the landlords side in these matters but honestly I think you got off lightly here.

AndyT678

TheBruce wrote: »

So what are my options?

Realistically? You can come on here, have a moan and maybe get some sympathy.

The removal guys would also have charged for however long it took them to get to your place and back again so maybe another 30 mins and if there were 3 of them then that's 6 hours.

SerialRenter

You could open a resolution with the deposit protect scheme if you wished, but i feel that fact it's been left 2 months and as frankly the deductions seem quite reasonable i'd just take it as experience and move on.

stalkah

Most dump's (tip's, recycling centres etc) don't allow commercial or trade waste which this would have been classed as, so they too would have had to pay to dispose of it. 293 seems pretty reasonable. Consider your self lucky.

benjus

stalkah wrote: »

Most dump's (tip's, recycling centres etc) don't allow commercial or trade waste which this would have been classed as, so they too would have had to pay to dispose of it. 293 seems pretty reasonable. Consider your self lucky.

Indeed... I got someone in to quote on clearance for things my ex-tenants left behind, and he was talking about £150 just to have them accepted by a commercial tip, with the labour and transport charges on top of that.

Blackpool_Saver

You need to read about what happens to other people, you were VERY lucky. I don't understand how you thought you could get away with what you did

BitterAndTwisted

You could have arranged for the rubbish to be removed and the property to be cleaned yourself. You didn't and now you need to pay. The landlord and their agent aren't obliged to scrape round and accept the cheapest quote they can get. To be honest I think you've got off very lightly indeed.

DaftyDuck

Another one in the "what did you expect.. the profit from them selling your junk on ebay?"

You could dispute the hours cleaning required, but with the evidence that you hadn't even emptied the place of your junk, I doubt that'd get far. You could dispute the time it took for the removal firm to empty it, but six hours might be a two-men-minimum team, half hour travel, hour empty, half hour travel again... seems the reasonable minimum to me.

No, even though I have sympathy with a family emergency, it's not up to a LL to clean up after you. That's what mumsy did, until you were twenty-seven.

aileth

Agree with everyone above.

£293 for the effort that must've been involved is very cheap and consider yourself lucky the landlord didn't make your life a nightmare.

Jitterbug123

I am not surprised at all that you had money deducted from your deposit.

I've been a tenant in a number of properties and would never have dreamed of not cleaning or removing my rubbish. Even if you consider that the landlord didn't hire anyone, you would be liable for the time it would take them to deal with it. What they value their time at could be based on numerous things, but may well increase if due to being full time employed they also had to take care of your mess out of hours.