Problem with Letting Agent about Deposit

gchild

I am a tenant and lived in Northwood in Santry last year ending in September. We rented the property as four "students" although all four of us have full time jobs, only two of us in part time education and are all over 22 and from Dublin.

We rented the property with movehome.ie which is based in Santry omniplex. Initially we had no problems with our four bedroom apartment but after 8 months our water heater made a very loud and long noise every time one of the toilets was flushed. We weren't sure whether it was dangerous so we called the letting agents to be sure and to have them look at it and it was getting so loud that it was waking us in the mornings. The letting agents response was "If the toilet still flushes, it's not broken". This was the first run in we had and was the start of a nightmare that is still continuing.

After two months of trying to contact the letting agent over said issue we then learned through our neighbors in other apartments in the building that we were paying a lot more per calendar month and that there was other vacant apartments in the building that were identical to ours which in one case was €200 cheaper. We decided seeing it was coming near the end of the lease that we would re-lease if the toilet was fixed and requested the rent was lowered to compete with the other apartments in the building. The response was very negative. We were told by the letting agents that "We don't care if you stay or go," and then treated like children for what we felt was a reasonable requests by a rude and arrogant man.

Deciding against renewal of the lease, obviously after the way were being treated, we were informed to be off the premesis by 3pm on the last day of our lease which we could not do due to work and classes and asked if we could push it back to 5 or 6 which we were denied even though legally the apartment was paid for until midnight that night, we reluctantly agreed and to be inspected and changed our schedules around to take time off to accommodate.

During the inspection the letting agent who informed us to be there at three o clock sharp was 45mins late then on inspecting the property told us that it was a "filthy" pointing out a single hair in a bathroom sink and saying "I'm not nit-picking, but look". To our eyes the property was completely cleaned to a reasonable standard and we felt insulted as we had spend a lot of time doing so. We were informed we could spend the next hour cleaning it or we could pay out of our deposit to have it cleaned, we reluctantly agreed to have it cleaned as all of our cleaning products had been moved out and we had to return to work and class which we were made late for by the estate agent.

In the next week the apartment was cleaned by professionals which apparently took three of them to clean it for four hours. We thought this was ridiculous but we could not contest it and just wanted the remainder of our deposit back for our new letting deposit. We were told it would be returned but the end of the week, It's now been 6 weeks.

On confronting the estate agent in the omni in Santry I was told that the deposit was not returned because the apartment was not filled yet and the funds were not available. To my mind the deposit should not have been touched and that it is none of our concern weather the apartment was filled or not. During the discussion I was treated like dirt by the estate agent who was the rudest person I have ever come across, he called us "the worse tenants he had ever come across" and when asked why could not submit a response. The discussion ended with him telling me to get out of his office. We are still waiting for the deposit and have filed a case with the PRTB.

Prospective clients of this company, I urge you to consider not using this company. We have never been treated so appallingly by anyone and they may not return your deposits. If you do, take pictures of everything on moving in, note whiter it is clean and email asap if not.

Anyone else ever have any similar experience?

3DataModem

gchild wrote: »

I was told that the deposit was not returned because the apartment was not filled yet and the funds were not available.

Jesus. What a brazen scumbag agent. Thanks for naming and shaming.

amdublin

Dude you've posted this twice already.

Very annoying.

Plus a big wall of text is very difficult to read.

gchild

Sorry, I'm new to boards and didn't know if my last post was the right place to put it but I had the big wall of text to include all the details, I feel they are quite important. Sorry

Zamboni

Was it this guy?

gchild

HOLY CRAP YESS! He is a horrible excuse for a human, it makes me shake with anger looking at this picture.

Zamboni

Well hold your nerve and get the PRTB judgment.

gchild

Did you have a run-in with him? Was he horrible?

Zamboni

Nope.

I like the syco approach in the meantime.
I don't know if it will work in a shopping centre though.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=75349511&postcount=7

Rose35

gchild wrote: »

Sorry, I'm new to boards and didn't know if my last post was the right place to put it but I had the big wall of text to include all the details, I feel they are quite important. Sorry

Dont feel you have to apologise for posting whatever length of text you want to submit to get your point across, im a newbie too and find some comments like amdublin just rude and pointless.

gchild

Haha, this could work, I could do anything right now.

quaalude

Zamboni wrote: »

Was it this guy?

What a tosser.

Bluehair

Thats not Fergal is it?

Was trying to find out if they'd handle a property outside Dublin for me and emailed them after numerous promised call-backs failed to materialise.

He did at least reply to my email in only three words exactly;

"we're not interested"

Concise i grant you...

Jehuty42

gchild wrote: »

I was told that the deposit was not returned because the apartment was not filled yet and the funds were not available

Got this line from a private landlord earlier this year. Seems to be a common attitude, that the deposit you give your landlord is given by him to his last tenant. Maybe that worked back when it was easy to get a tenant in straight away. Those days are over now.

I have every sympathy for landlord facing a lack of liquidity at the moment, but as I see it I paid a deposit, it's not to be spent by you or anyone, it is to be held for the duration of the tenancy. In many other countries there is an independent third party for holding deposits like that.

amdublin

Rose35 wrote: »

Dont feel you have to apologise for posting whatever length of text you want to submit to get your point across, im a newbie too and find some comments like amdublin just rude and pointless.

Pointless eh?

Not helpful no? If you know how to post in a better style then you will get more/better responses.

odds_on

Zamboni wrote: »

Well hold your nerve and get the PRTB judgment.

And I hope you have also claimed for damages. Withholding a deposit unjustifiably often results in damages awarded to the tenant - sometimes in the 1000s of euros - See PRTB dispute DR1393/2008

Victor

Multiple threads split and merged.

Duplicate posts deleted.

Space added between paragraphs.

3DataModem wrote: »

What a brazen scumbag agent.

gchild wrote: »

He is a horrible excuse for a human

quaalude wrote: »

What a tosser.

We only have one person's word here, so please ease off on comments like this.

Rose35 wrote: »

Dont feel you have to apologise for posting whatever length of text you want to submit to get your point across, im a newbie too and find some comments like amdublin just rude and pointless.

Proper paragraphs are nice. Posting the same thing three times in different threads isn't.