For the last four months, I've been in a digital argument with my former landlord, trying to recover my full deposit - all £516 of it. But when I did get it back, just over six weeks after leaving the property, there was a clear surprise waiting for me in my email inbox.
£150 reduction for "Cleaning at End of Lease," leaving me and my housemate with only just over two thirds of the deposit on offer and, when I asked for an explanation for the charge, I had no response.
What cleaning? As far as I know, it was my Dad and I, as well as my housemates sister, that cleaned everything in the property we rented throughout the last academic year and our third year of university. We even had the evidence to prove it from both ends.
150 pounds for cleaning the property. It was crazy! The landlord hadn't done a thing for us all year and suddenly I was expected to just accept a 150 pound cleaning reduction fee. The only thing she had done was replace the fridge freezer unit because it was a health and safety hazard around last October and it took her six weeks, yes six weeks, numerous calls to the letting agent and the electric trip switch going twice, to do that. Even then, I got scolded like a child for stopping an electrical fire from occurring, by switching off the main power the night before. What are you meant to do, if suddenly all you can hear is electric loudly crackling and fizzling? When the landlord did [finally] replace the fridge-freezer unit, she had to put it at an angle, so of course this years renters and future tenants cannot easily get to the switch board if the electrics go.
Apparently, though this means that a £150 reduction fee for cleaning is acceptable?
Its not! If the property I was a renting tenant in was left in a tip, and it was about the fridge freezer needing to be replaced, I could somewhat understand it. But the property was cleaned out, and there was no mention of the replacement of items on the bill they sent me. The garden was cleared and the remaining waste taken to the domestic waste site by my Dad. So why a £150 cleaning reduction fee.
As it turns out, this reduction fee of 150 pounds for cleaning is pretty much a standard fee landlords bill their tenants for, and they do it with everyone.
So do you accept it and move on?
Or do you disagree with it and decide to fight your former landlord for fraud and theft? Because that is what it is.
Landlords believe they have a right to your money and an increase in funds. They don't! It's your money they're trying to keep. So what do you do? Fight them for it. Fight for the right to have your deposit returned. When I first started out the process of reclaiming my deposit, I had to go back to the basics. The Letting Agent I was using hadn't bothered to set up our Deposit Protection Scheme (DPS) Accounts and send us the details, so I had to sort that out over the phone, early in September, after the lease had fully expired. Once that was set up, I applied and then found out that I had one chance at claiming the deposit back. I had to claim it all or we lost the Deposit.
I was going to make a Statutory Declaration six weeks later, when the email I referred to at the beginning of this post turned up. Once that had been established - it was just a case of getting all the evidence corroborated and sent off. That's the main important aspect of this whole ordeal - when you move out at the end of your lease, or if you've already moved out like me, make doubly sure you have photographic evidence and evidence showing your 'conversations' with your Letting Agent as they could be the very thing you need to either receive or lose your money.
With that in mind, how do you feel about the standard £150 Cleaning at End of Lease Fee? This post may be about my own experience, but do you see the familiarity, the similarities in your experiences. Hopefully, this is one way of fighting back against landlords that targets the student renting market. What's your say on this? Read and Comment below.
I was going to make a Statutory Declaration six weeks later, when the email I referred to at the beginning of this post turned up. Once that had been established - it was just a case of getting all the evidence corroborated and sent off. That's the main important aspect of this whole ordeal - when you move out at the end of your lease, or if you've already moved out like me, make doubly sure you have photographic evidence and evidence showing your 'conversations' with your Letting Agent as they could be the very thing you need to either receive or lose your money.
With that in mind, how do you feel about the standard £150 Cleaning at End of Lease Fee? This post may be about my own experience, but do you see the familiarity, the similarities in your experiences. Hopefully, this is one way of fighting back against landlords that targets the student renting market. What's your say on this? Read and Comment below.
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