Half Above Board Property Issue

ve

Myself and my girlfriend have been renting a one bedroom apartment for the past 16 months. We are happy with the accomodation and we would consider ourselves on friendly terms with the landlord (a couple, whom have several businesses in the area, including one located underneath our apartment). When we moved in, we were told what the monthly rent included, NTL and Refuse collection. So we assumed electricity was our problem, which was fine. There was no rent books, contract, or anything like that. We like(d) the property and were happy to take it at the asking price.

Shortly after we moved in we were told that NTL when installing service in the area did not have enough power to power some of their booster equipment, so my landlord who is friendly with a head NTL engineer in our area let them power off our apartment. He was upfront about this, and I said to him well surely we're not going to be paying for that and his response was "Listen don't worry about it, I'll take care of it". So after 2 months, we had given him no ESB reading and we did not receive an ESB bill. We did ask for broadband however (via NTL) and expected to pay for that. The first bill for NTL arrived, and we paid it immediately. Then for the next 8 months we received no further bills through the door (not ESB or NTL), so we assumed that the landlord was "taking care of it". While that was happening myself and my girlfriend were at home one afternoon and all of a sudden our front door opens (no doorbell rang) and in walks this NTL engineer along with a member of staff from the business located beneath us. I stormed out and yet a yell and said "get out", the girl who let the engineer said, "sorry I didn't think anyone was home", and I said "that is most certainly not the point". So anyway the Engineer was coming in to disconnect their equipment from us as they had sorted out whatever power issue they had. Time passed and finally last February, our landlord goes to hand us over to a property management company as he wants to finally put things "above board". So the company comes on board and does an absolutely unprofessional job, such as make 11 errors in our lease , everything from getting our names wrong, the address wrong, to saying it was a 2 bedroom apartment, etc. What they did do though, is finally get the ESB bill in our name and we now (since February) receive a fair ESB bill. We then 2 weeks ago received a bill from NTL that stated "the balance owed immediately" was €0.00, so we thought nothing of it (plus this bill was not in our name).

Then today (out of the blue) a secretary from one of our landlord's businesses rings us up saying that he has been paying our NTL all along and an outstanding bill of €450 is owed (since we first moved in) and that he wants us to contact NTL and have the direct debit changed to us. She didn't say he wants the money exactly, but it was implied.

Where the hell do we stand with all of this, as the property management company that he hired last february were allegedly pulling a fast one on him, so he has asked us to start paying our rent back in to his bank account as opposed to theirs since May (and which is what we did before February when the brought the property management Co. on board).

The crap thing is, we have not yet spoke to him personally about this, we just had the call today. We're mighty annoyed, but he is a decent enough guy (quite stern business man type), but for example when the girl let the engineer in to our apartment, I phoned him and he appologised profusely and said it would never EVER happen again (and it hasn't).

ctc_celtic

would you have been expecting to pay extra for NTL broadband anyway? would it have added up to €450?
you landlord sounds like a decent business man, and from what you say has been good to you, i doubt he will demand payment for all of the NTL bill if he said the TV side of it was included.
talking to him should clear things up.

on another point, are you or your partner normally around the house during the day, i would just be thinking that, it might not have been the first time the shop staff let someone into your apartment.

ve

on another point, are you or your partner normally around the house during the day, i would just be thinking that, it might not have been the first time the shop staff let someone into your apartment.

Yeah the thought crossed our minds. We both would have been out of the apartment up until then, but my partner now e-Works from home so we know it has not happened since. Our landlord said he would remove the spare key from downstairs altogether, which we believe he did.

From my calculations we owe him €290 for broadband (to date) if we are indeed entitled by law to pay that. If it is, we will, but if it isn't I want to know. Also if we do have to pay, do you think it is reasonable of us to request that repayments are made over time (and before we give notice to terminate the tennancy).

ctc_celtic

but i though the landlord said he would pay for NTL, he would have ment the TV, if you ordered the Broadband, then you are liable for that (extra).
i assume you have no problem paying you share for the Broadband?

The_Conductor

ctc_celtic wrote:

would you have been expecting to pay extra for NTL broadband anyway? would it have added up to €450?

Myself and the wifey have NTL's basic broadband package. You have to take analogue cable with it, and it works out at €58 a month (€116 per two month bill). Its a 3Mb connection, with a reasonable contention ratio, when it works, so its pretty ok value. So, its entirely possible that the OP owes €450 for broadband- this would actually by my calculations be very much at the lower end of what they owe.

NTL do not strip out the analogue charge from the BB charge- this bumps it up by about €20 a month, over and above what it would otherwise be.

Shane

ve

The way we were looking at it, is that we already paid €100 to NTL, which would bring the total owed down, and also part of our rental terms was that our landlord would pay for NTL (analogue) TV, which makes up 40% of the bill.

I understand that we need the TV service to get broadband, but the way we're looking at it, we shouldn't owe the landlord anything if we didn't get broadband (not the €40 or so bi-monthly).

The_Conductor

To cut a long story short- you have had broadband for x amount of time. If it wasn't working for a period of time (as has been the case over much of Dublin, as NTL have repaired their cables and upgraded some of their junctions to fibre)- it is up to you to get a credit for this period from NTL added to the NTL account (Engineers cannot organise this, it has to be done with customer services).

Analogue is about 21+VAT a month.
Broadband is about 25+VAT a month.

If your landlord is friends with the engineer- its highly possible that the engineer simply had the connection outside connected up, to give you analogue tv free of charge (its a regular occurence, and very difficult for NTL to trace).

Best case scenario the broadband is about 30 Euro a month in total, if the landlord agrees to cover the analogue portion of the bill (he may have assumed he was getting the analogue free though). If you had broadband installed without his knowledge- you would be liable for the whole bill. If he was fully aware of it, and still maintained that he would cover the analogue portion of the bill- your portion of the bill is the €30 a month, times however many months you had broadband installed (16 months?) less the 100 you've already paid- i.e. €380 now due. If Broadband wasn't working for a while- its an issue you have with the providor (NTL), as you got it installed, not the landlord- and you should resolve it by means of a credit from the providor.

S.