Rental deposit dispute - do I have valid arguments?

Owleyes00

I had my mum do a deep clean of the place I most recently left yet they still charged for a cleaner. They also charged for a carpet clean on cream carpets in a small flat including the hallway so what they were expecting there was beyond me. My favourite bit was the £4.50 for a blown bulb that tbh I didn’t even no about.

 I was pretty annoyed about it tbh it came to £260 deductions in total. I honestly believe I probably could have disputed the carpet clean as wear and tear and the professional cleaning on account of the fact it absolutely was clean but in the end we decided we frankly couldn’t be bothered and the deposit money was spent so long ago it was already gone and we would rather have the deposit with deductions now than wait for the extra £260.

dimbo61

Did the LL/LA complete a Video or Photo Inventory of the rental property before you moved in ?
Did you see this Inventory and sign the document ( Get a copy ) ?
It is up to the Landlord or his/her agent the Lettings Agents to prove the condition of the property before you moved in and after you have moved out.
So file a dispute with MyDeposits ASAP

bed22

anselld said:

If we go through the agreement with a fine tooth comb we are no doubt going to find areas where you have breached the agreement, no matter how minor.  Are you going to translate all those into financial recompense for the Landlord?  No.

The bottom line is that the L has up to six years to claim for damages if they can prove them.  10 days to notify is an aim and it is not allways practical to achieve so not sure why it is even in the agreement but it is not relevant to your case.  The L cannot make deductions from the deposit without consent through the DPS scheme so that is also a non-issue.

What is important is the fairness or otherwise of the proposed deductions and that is what the scheme is there for.  Make a claim and let them decide.

Yeah I take your point.

bbat said:

Absolutely file a dispute and see what happens, and do it now. 

I know it's annoying getting advice after something happens but i learnt the hart way with this in days before deposit protection. Take photos of condition start of tenancy and after cleaning end of tenancy in case of dispute. Also  Buy some Viakal for limescale. Requires no effort, spray it on, leave it and then wipe down. If I was cleaning I'd charge for minimum call out fee for that, which could be one or two hours.

Yeah for my current tenancy I've made sure not to fall into the same trap of inadequately recording the state of the place on move-in, got photos of anything I think could be used against us. The trick with my last tenancy was the inventory went into significantly less detail than the check-out report, which went into insane detail about every tiny flek of dust. But I get that its our responsibility as tenants to make sure we're satisfied with the inventory, mistake noted. Thanks for the Viakal suggestion, I'll defo make a note of that!

Owleyes00 said:

I had my mum do a deep clean of the place I most recently left yet they still charged for a cleaner. They also charged for a carpet clean on cream carpets in a small flat including the hallway so what they were expecting there was beyond me. My favourite bit was the £4.50 for a blown bulb that tbh I didn’t even no about.

 I was pretty annoyed about it tbh it came to £260 deductions in total. I honestly believe I probably could have disputed the carpet clean as wear and tear and the professional cleaning on account of the fact it absolutely was clean but in the end we decided we frankly couldn’t be bothered and the deposit money was spent so long ago it was already gone and we would rather have the deposit with deductions now than wait for the extra £260.

Yeah it's so annoying yet so common. I'm keen to dispute it out of principle, might be more trouble than it's worth but oh well.

dimbo61 said:

Did the LL/LA complete a Video or Photo Inventory of the rental property before you moved in ?
Did you see this Inventory and sign the document ( Get a copy ) ?
It is up to the Landlord or his/her agent the Lettings Agents to prove the condition of the property before you moved in and after you have moved out.
So file a dispute with MyDeposits ASAP

Yes they did a photo inventory (though the photo quality as absolutely atrocious, you can hardly make out any details), and yes I did see it and sign it. But it doesn't go into great detail, significantly less than the check-out report does at least. I would have added more detail to it had I known.

Thanks everyone for the help, I'll file a dispute and report back with the outcome.

RAS

bed22 said:

The trick with my last tenancy was the inventory went into significantly less detail than the check-out report, which went into insane detail about every tiny flek of dust. But I get that its our responsibility as tenants to make sure we're satisfied with the inventory,

Yes they did a photo inventory (though the photo quality as absolutely atrocious, you can hardly make out any details), and yes I did see it and sign it. But it doesn't go into great detail, significantly less than the check-out report does at least. I would have added more detail to it had I known.

Thanks everyone for the help, I'll file a dispute and report back with the outcome.

The landlord has to prove that the property was returned in a worse state than when it was let out.

If the photo inventory was poor quality, they have no evidence of "brilliant condition" which they purport to have let the property, so they can't deduct anything for minor niggles that aren't evident from comparing the incoming and out going inventory,

So what if there was dust when you moved out? Is there evidence of a complete absence of dust when you moved in?

TripleH

If the check in report was very vague / had less details than the check out report, I would argue about the irrelevance of the checkout report.

I had 2 attempted deductions from a deposit, 1 for a dirty external window which was behind a locked gate I didn't have a key to because the guy who originally owned the property was doing building work there, Another for failing to replace light bulbs. I pointed out that there were spare bulbs on the windowsill and that one of the 2 metal chandeliers had fallen on me when I tried to change a bulb (which I reported when it happened 2 days before we moved out). Both claims were ruled in my favour.