Landlord Entering Property Without Permission

Bogwoppit wrote: »

No sign of the OP, starting to wonder if this was a wind up.

Nope, not a wind-up I'm afraid; I wish it was.

I meant to come back and update sooner but two of the kids have come down with the chicken pox (thank Christ the eldest had already gotten it) so I've had my hands full.

So basically after I sent that email, I heard nothing for a couple of days. Now it was on a Friday that I sent it, so I wasn't expecting to hear over the weekend but by the Tuesday evening I still hadn't heard anything, which I thought was pretty weird. I'd sent a registered letter on the Monday morning (exact copy of what I'd sent in the email) so I knew he'd have received that on the Tuesday.

Also, something to bear in mind is that my husband is actually the "main" tenant (ie his name is first on the lease) so wrote the letter/email as though they were from him, and sent the email from his email account (you'll see why I'm mentioning this below)

Anyway, the husband and I had to go in to the solicitor on Wednesday morning and my phone rings while I'm in there and it's the landlord! I answered it and he says he received the letter and the email and wanted to have a chat about it. Now there was no reason why he should have been contacting me instead of my husband - it was my husband's details that we put on the correspondence, and he only had my phone number as an emergency contact. I figured that he was ringing me to try and intimidate me, as opposed to getting in touch with my husband. Sure enough, he starts off on a big rant and I just said "Sorry *landlord*, just before you go on I wanted to let you know you're on speaker. My husband is here, too. And so is our solicitor."

Well, the tone changed instantly! :pac: He was suddenly very apologetic and apparently he was just trying to be "helpful" because he knows I'm a busy mum, and he didn't want to be bothering me organising inspections, so he just popped in when I was out. I asked why he was just so happened to call when the dog wasn't there and again, it was to be "helpful" because he was "concerned" that the dog would bark and annoy the neighbours. My husband goes "so have you been watching the house? How do you know the dog isn't there unless you've been watching my wife and learning her routine?" There was a lot of stuttering and stammering, and he tried to say it was just co-incidence.

Then I said (jokingly but not) that at least we wouldn't need the Gardai to come out and take fingerprints, because before we put the cameras in, we had been afraid that someone was casing the house and trying to get in. Well as soon as I mentioned the Guards, he nearly sh*t himself. It was pretty funny to hear the panic in his voice, and he assured us we didn't need to get them involved. He also said he could see we were "obviously excellent tenants" and there wouldn't be any need for him to do any more inspections, but that if he needed to do any, he'd arrange for someone else to do it while we were both present. He said this was because he "understood we wouldn't be comfortable with him in the house" but I reckon it's more likely because he's mortified and probably never wants to set eyes on us again.

So that was that. Our solicitor got a great laugh out of it, and I still can't get over the absolutely perfect timing of that phone call, because I think if he'd called and I'd been on my own, I'd say things would have gone very differently.

I have to say I really appreciate all the advice I got here, and I'm happy to say that (so far) he hasn't turned into a serial killer :pac: I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in his office for that phone call though.

Thargor wrote: »

Wow you should have made a thread about this aswell! What happened there?

Good question! Don't ask me how, but their builders somehow managed to drive an excavator through the front wall of our house. They weren't able to explain how it happened - best guess is either someone left the brake off or something, or else someone actually lost control of the thing but they're lying to try and cover their ass. Luckily, we weren't in the house at the time - I was out collecting the kids from school and arrived back home to find an excavator in my living room and a pile of rubble and broken glass where my front bay window used to be. Fire brigade and ambulance pulled up just behind me, my neighbour panicked and called them because he wasn't sure if me or the kids were in the house at the time.