Landlord owes us money

Monkey61

Hi folks,

I moved out of my old flat in July. Our landlord owned quite a few properties and has two other men working for him - one seems to answer the phones in his office and the other is a general handyman. In the last few months of our lease, the landlord became increasingly difficult to get hold of. He would never answer his phone, return calls or reply to emails. The other two men were easily contactable, but couldn't do anything for us without his authorisation.

We contacted him about the return of our deposit well before we left to make sure he had time to get the money together and he promised he would. It took us three months of endless phone calls and emails before we finally got £300 back from him with the promise of the remaining £400 the following week. It's now been a further three months and he has gone back to ignoring his phone and emails.

Anytime we call the office, the man who's answering the phones says that it's not his responsibility but he will pass the message on to the landlord.

What do we do? I had the idea of telling him that we would be calling around to his office and to have the money waiting, and basically to sit there until he sorts it out. Is that legal though or could he call the police to remove us?

I know we could go to a solicitor, but that seems like it would end up costing more than the £400 if he continued to dig his heels in. I know I shouldn't have let this go on so long, but I didn't want to upset him, in case it made him less willing to hand over the cash. He's not actually refusing to pay us back by the way. Any time we have gotten to speak to him, he promises that the money will be in our account on a certain day, but it never is.

Any help appreciated cos I'm out of work and really need that money!

MysticalSoul

Tell him if you don't get a satisfactory response within a week, you will be contacting PRTB about it.

Bluetonic

Judging by the £ symbol being used and a quick scan of the OPs previous posts it appears this is UK related.

The PRTB will be of no use.

Monkey61

Sorry forgot to mention I'm in England.

Basically, calling in a mediator would be the next step then. Would you advise against calling into his office first?

sorella

It has taken us 4 months to get our deposit back; in Ireland. Promises that were not fulfilled etc. Even the letting agent took two months to finally get it back. We carried on pestering simply