Yet another "can't get deposit back" story.

frazzledma

We just left a house we rented and the landlady is refusing to pay our deposit back.

Even though we were leaving at the end of our 12 month term, and therefore not obliged to give written notice, I covered my backside (after bad experience with landlord last year), and wrote giving 35+ days notice that we were leaving.

Our tenancy ended and was paid in full up to 8th August, but we vacated actually on 1st August as our new tenancy was starting on that date. (So she has 8 days rent already out of us that we were not there for.)

The property was left absolutely spotless.

When we viewed the property we were told the garden would not be our responsibility (it was huge) and only for this we moved in. We would not have taken it otherwise as we knew we wouldn't manage it. Even had we bought a mower there was nowhere to store it and walking behind a mower would have taken several hours to do. However, no gardening help was forthcoming and I ended up paying an auld fella €30 a fortnight to cut the grass on a ride-on. This was a major factor in our moving out, the expenses were crippling us.

I understand the tenancy is registered with PRTB however I am certain there is no BER cert, which I understand is a legal requirement. The house had absolutely no insulation, no lagging on tank or pipes and the so-called double glazing let draughts in. The cost of heating it is something we couldn't contemplate for another winter. I stupidly didn't check this when taking it on.

There were some items of damage, i.e two wooden kitchen chairs completely collapsed on us and I mean suddenly ruptured at the badly joined spindles. She's lucky we weren't suing her for injuries. When I told her about those she laughed it off and said "Not to worry, I've loads more of them here."

The sliding patio door stopped sliding smoothly during the severe winter weather, I feel the deep frost damaged the metal runners, she said firstly that her experts told her it was caused by it being slammed shut (rubbish, not possible to slam it because of the drag) and is now saying her experts said it was caused by a stone getting into the runner and not being removed (rubbish, we checked when it started being wonky and there was nothing to remove). We kept it going with lube spray but obviously it's now sticking again for her.

The tenancy agreement contains an itinerary of items, one being "two inches of oil" in the tank, however when we moved in there was not a drop of oil in the tank but lying beside it was 15 foot of black tubing stinking of kerosene. She is complaining we left the oil empty and she'll need a plumber out before she starts the system but my husband put a 5 gallon drum in there in April and we haven't switched the system on since then, given we didn't need heating. We just used immersion for hot water.

I pointed out to her one small area of wall that my 4yo scribbled on in biro pen and which I couldn't clean off despite many attempts. It would literally take one swipe with a brush or roller to sort. She said it was nothing to worry about at that time.

Typically, the letting agent has gone on holiday without dealing with this despite several requests to do so (he didn't say he was going on holiday).

Threshold won't help us until we've given her 4 weeks to pay up, but I need shoes for my kids to go to school in and literally have €140 in my bank account, spent all our savings on moving house and whaddyaknow, hubby was served notice on his job last week.

PRTB are wanting €25 I can't spare to raise a dispute which will take many months for them to get to because of a backlog.

I have read all the advice here on Boards, much of which I wished I'd thought of before (like taking photos of the house being so clean) so I know there's not much more can be said, I just wanted my experience to be put "out there" for others to learn from.

Our last landlord kept our deposit after claiming we stole his washing machine (he removed it at the beginning of the let as we had our own that we preferred to use) and his lawnmower (which was in the shed when we vacated). We moved from the UK in 2009 and we always rented back there. We're responsible tenants with a young family and we never had our deposit held before. The most we got held one time was £20 for carpet cleaning.

However it seems to be "the done thing" with landlords in Ireland and I'm not surprised PRTB has a backlog of cases to work through.

Upshot is I am desperately upset now, I was counting on that money to get my kids back to school with everything they need (fortunately I have everything now except new shoes which they both desperately need having grown like sprouts over the summer!).

Sorry for such a long post and maybe a bit of over-sharing. Thanks for reading.

Zamboni

TL:
Why hasn't she returned your deposit?

frazzledma

She refuses to say specifically why. Apart from it taking her two weeks to sort the garden (another nonsense). Threshold say she can't retain for work she has done herself i.e. it would have to be a proper receipt from a company etc for her to do that.

She said the house was disgusting, it definitely was not and she was in there with me, she'd have said so at the time I am sure.

The sliding door is the main contention I think, but again she's changing her story so I don't think she's asked any "expert" at all.

And the oil tank was mentioned and needing a plumber to restart, which is also not true.

But all my words against hers I suppose.

RedXIV

frazzledma wrote: »

She refuses to say specifically why. Apart from it taking her two weeks to sort the garden (another nonsense). Threshold say she can't retain for work she has done herself i.e. it would have to be a proper receipt from a company etc for her to do that.

She said the house was disgusting, it definitely was not and she was in there with me, she'd have said so at the time I am sure.

The sliding door is the main contention I think, but again she's changing her story so I don't think she's asked any "expert" at all.

And the oil tank was mentioned and needing a plumber to restart, which is also not true.

But all my words against hers I suppose.

But as pointed out, without receipts, she can't prove work was needed. The law tends to favour tenants over landlords, The onus is on her to PROVE that the deposit shouldn't have been returned rather than you prove it should

frazzledma

RedXIV wrote: »

But as pointed out, without receipts, she can't prove work was needed. The law tends to favour tenants over landlords, The onus is on her to PROVE that the deposit shouldn't have been returned rather than you prove it should

Thank you RedXIV that is heartening to hear anyway.

mari2222

Tell her you will name the property on boards if she is unresponsive.

Paulw

mari2222 wrote: »

Tell her you will name the property on boards if she is unresponsive.

What a load of rubbish.

Just lodge a PRTB dispute. Simple.

frazzledma

Paulw wrote: »

What a load of rubbish.

Just lodge a PRTB dispute. Simple.

I intend to as soon as I have €25 spare. Although of course I'd rather get the cold hard cash out of her sooner than wait for them to deal with it.

Does anyone know if PRTB awards costs as in getting that €25 back on successful dispute completion? We are totally breadline now.

Uncle Junior

If you're taking a case to the PRTB, make sure that you state in your claim that you're also seeking to have the cost of the dispute application fee (€25) returned if your case is upheld. There's no hard and fast rule on this but an adjudicator can include the €25 in any award that (s)he chooses to take.

frazzledma

Thank you Uncle Junior, I will do so.