A bit of advice regarding no hot water/heating after 3 weeks

Marvel1

lookstraightahead wrote: »

Compensate them.

Fair enough.

What if you were the homeowner (living in your house) and the same thing happens?

need_an_answer

Just because someone is a LL does not entitle them to a quicker plumbing service than the next person.

That is why the term "what is reasonable" is used.

Things do break and even having the best insurance policy in place doesn't mean a better or quicker service in some cases.

That's life whether you are a tenant LL or homeowner.


If you start to go down the route of compensation just how long do you think it will be before everyone just puts up their prices all the way along the supply chain in order to be able to satisfy needs?

You would end up that rent across the board became higher on the offchance that the LL had to pay compensation, and in the same vein work carried out by suppliers would be more expensive because they need to supply an on demand service no matter what.

In this case the OP probably has a far more efficient boiler now which will save heating costs going forward(which they will benefit from rather than the LL)
and having a boiler fitted within 3 weeks


For those who consider compensation appropriate I would be interested to hear what sort of figure you had in mind?

lookstraightahead

cjdavies wrote: »

Fair enough.

What if you were the homeowner (living in your house) and the same thing happens?

As the homeowner I am not paying myself for a service. If I had a cranky boiler I would probably expect it to break down and certainly wouldn't 'sell' it as working to a customer. At least if I were the homeowner using a bucket to have a cold shower would be free. If I needed a shower of course, as some might say I can have a flannel wash every day (yuck).

lookstraightahead

Throwaway1 wrote: »

I went 13 weeks with no hot water or heating earlier this year in my rented house! It can be difficult to get a plumber out at short notice and if it was your own house it may have taken around that sort of time to fix it (the 14 days not 13 weeks - don't ever use SSE repair service). So long as you had access to hot water (e.g. via a kettle) then it's liveable, heating isn't needed this time of year thankfully. As they did come out within the 3-5 working days to have a look at it, they may be able to argue that they were attempting to fix it? I'm not sure but I don't think they will reduce rent as they may be able to argue you had other ways to heat water and of course the rest of the house was still habitable.

That must have been utterly depressing for you. You are a better person than me!

To go without something like this for 13 weeks I don't think is acceptable. You don't pay for something that's just liveable otherwise that would be stated in your contract. Did you not receive anything at all compensation-wise?

lookstraightahead

Kynthia wrote: »

The OP is paying to live in a property and they did so. If you try to portion out the percentage of their rent that goes towards having a working boiler it would be tiny as the rent is mostly to occupy the property and then the amounts towards having a non-leaking roof, walls without damp, windows and doors that keep out the elements, a water supply, working pipes, a functioning electrical supply, etc, etc would be very small across multiple things. No rental contract guarantees things won't breakdown and need repairing which is why rent isn't broken down into components like this. You pay to live somewhere and the landlord is obliged to maintain the property, so having the boiler break in the property is not like paying for a delivery for a certain day and not getting it.

I don't think you can apportion, agreed. I think it needs to be looked at as a whole - is the tenant receiving the quality of product paid for. The answer is no. You don't pay as a tenant just for sitting in a property, you have a right to receive a quality commensurate to the rent you pay/the benefits in your contract. Not having hot water is a big deal and I wouldn't want to live somewhere without it for three weeks. And I'm not going to use my kettle and my time to fill up a tub while a landlord showers at my expense in their property.

Throwaway1

lookstraightahead wrote: »

That must have been utterly depressing for you. You are a better person than me!

To go without something like this for 13 weeks I don't think is acceptable. You don't pay for something that's just liveable otherwise that would be stated in your contract. Did you not receive anything at all compensation-wise?

It was incredibly despressing yes, and no, I didn't receive any compensation. However, I could see that the LL truthfully was doing all he could to get it fixed and we were being given the run around by the SSE cover service he was paying for. He ended up paying a fortune out to a second company to get it fixed and is still chasing the money back from the first one now, 4 months later. We were both being screwed around, he wasn't sitting there laughing at making money whilst I was having cold showers. He's just a normal guy letting out this one property that he used to live in and he has been really reasonable and not raised rent the 9 years we have been here. I didn't really see why he should be made to lose money compensating me for something that wasn't his fault and he was trying to fix - having some money back wouldn't have made the water any warmer.

NeilCr

To be fair, nowhere did the OP say she couldn't have a shower.

I belong to my local gym which is 10 minutes walk. My partner lives a few minutes further. When I was working we had showers there. Many people do have viable alternatives which wouldn't really put them out that much. As long as the landlord was doing all they could (and it sounds in this case as though he was) then I wouldn't be looking for any compensation/rent reduction - especially as there was a new boiler installed within three weeks.

And I have no idea how you work out compensation dependent on the tenant's access to other facilities.

No-one is saying it's nice (I'd hate it myself I admit) but sometimes you do have to put yourself out a bit, too.

lookstraightahead

Maybe go to the local gym and ask if you can use their facilities for free, as most people are not gym members.

lookstraightahead

Or pop to the landlord for a shower

NeilCr

lookstraightahead wrote: »

Maybe go to the local gym and ask if you can use their facilities for free, as most people are not gym members.

Nope. But folks have friends, relatives, partners, work with showers etc too. Quite a few alternatives.

And, these days, there are low cost gyms which you can join. One of our local ones is £18 per month with no contract. Well worth it for three weeks worth of showers and you'd get it back through the more efficient boiler.