Tenants want €280 for dry cleaning due to mould

jcn1977

280 euros doesn't sound extortionate at all... if they can prove the loss you are screwed pure and simple. They can prove the loss by showing the receipt then that's that. I can think of lots of reasons why the bill could come to 280 euros.

I have wool coats that are dry clean only, I have suits, cashmere, as does my girlfriend... and then there's things like a wedding dress. Cost of dry cleaning one suit would be how much? 15-20 euros? I looked up a price list, it's 5 for a jumper, 5 for a dress shirt, 15 for a dress, 6 for a silk tie. As someone who owns 10 dress shirts, 6 silk ties and 4 suits my costs alone would come to 70 for the suits, 50 for the shirts, and 36 for the ties. That's 156 euros. I've also got three cashmere jumpers that are dry clean or hand wash only so we're up to about 170 euros.

It's not necessarily that all the clothes are mouldy, but that the existence of the damp means that the clothes have to be dry cleaned to insure they don't go mouldy in the future. Just because there is no mould visible on the clothes right now it doesn't mean that further mould will not grow because of spores. Everything in that wardrobe needs to effectively be nuked.

You could always suggest that the tenants should have hand washed some things themselves, but the tenants can just argue back why should they spend their time doing that because of something that isn't their problem.

The real question is why they should they risk their clothes being permanently damaged at a far greater cost (ultimately to you). I see you mention "several dozen armani suits each" which would be at least 48 suites between them costing 840 euros.

What you have described appears to sound structural. They have talked about how they got a wardrobe and the damp then penetrated this through the wall behind it. If this is the case be grateful they haven't claimed for the wardrobe too. I would suggest that it is the case for another reason too - you haven't mentioned damp anywhere else and getting damp just behind the back of a wardrobe would be a weird place to get it if it were lifestyle related.