LL demanding £500 utility bill 8 months after moving out of property. Advice?

PuzzledDave

Whilst ignoring him seems the best option, if you really want to respond you could use something like this:

"I do not acknowledge any debt. I will ask again for the last time for full evidence of the debt you claim is owed. No further correspondence will be entered into until complete and full proof is supplied by you".

Marvel1

FBaby wrote: »

He's not trying him on, you owe him that money, end of. Frankly, your workings that you probably didn't spend more than £6 a month on gas seems amazing if you lived there and if I were you, I would accept that £500 over three years is a much more realistic utilisation.

You can ignore it and hope it goes away, but be prepared to be taken to court. You will then know how much you really owe but you might end up with having to pay court fees in addition to the owed amount.

So why not show the bill?

stator

If your boiler was still providing hot water to other flats, then how on earth could you possibly know how much of that was from your usage and how much was theirs?

If you never had a gas bill from British Gas because it was still in his name, then I would refuse to pay at all.

If he takes you to small claims court he will have to provide evidence and you can provide your evidence, including that the boiler wasn't solely for your own use, and I think the judge is unlikely to rule in his favour. If he DID rule in the LLs favour, then you have to pay it. If you pay it after losing the small claims court, it won't affect your credit rating at all.

Fufflenuts

Pixie5740 wrote: »

Did your tenancy agreement say that Gas was included with the rent? If so was it ever updated when your landlord wanted you to start paying for your gas usage?

How have you calculated your gas usage to be £6 a month? That sounds incredibly low even for someone living very frugally? Did you ever take meter readings?

No and no. The tenancy agreement stated no specifics about utilities. It was verbally agreed that gas was included at the beginning and I verbally agreed to pay for gas in 2014. I expected to be billed for it at some point but was not. I took regular gas readings and supplied them to British Gas while living there, and these should be on the bill. My usage really does work out at about an average of £6-7/mo - I'm a student and I budget carefully. I did not use the hot water (the shower was electric, I have no washing machine, and the taps took so long to run hot that I would usually boil the kettle). Gas heating was used only in the winter for timed hours per day. If I had the bill I should be able to work out from the meter readings what usage is mine, as it would be the usage in winter less the average from the rest of the year.

I told the LL that my usage was probably about 80% of the total gas usage from the property as a rough guess (of course, I don't have a way of actually knowing how much hot water usage from the other flats affected the bill) and he claims to have knocked 20% of the bill total (he said the original total was £600) and seems to think that is sufficient. I wasn't expecting him to take this as an invitation to simply give me a figure with 20% knocked off instead of showing me the bill. Unfortunately he has a tendency to ignore what I'm saying, and I genuinely think he didn't actually read the letter I sent to him - he didn't respond to anything it said/asked. I'm not contesting that he's entitled to payment for gas usage, but 1) the time elapsed and lump payment request is highly inconvenient/difficult for me to pay and not my fault as the tenant, and 2) I don't believe he's billing me the correct amount and he seems to be insisting that I simply take him at his word.

Thanks for the responses - they vary a lot but my feeling is that if I can convince him to reply to my very polite and well-reasoned letter with a copy of the bill and an explanation as to why I haven't been billed over the last four years, then I can ascertain the correct amount and consider payments if it was simply a genuine mistake. If he won't supply those things then then I don't think I should consent to pay anything.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

You are still coming at it from the wrong way despite what everyone has said.

You don't have to convince him to do anything. You asked for a bill. If he doesn't do exactly what you want him to do you simply ignore him. He has no way to make you pay this, short of taking you to court, and if he takes you to court and testifies that he simply asked you for an unverified sum without documentary evidence, they will throw it out and laugh at him.