...this time with the new letting agent! I'm just going to c&p what I've posted elsewhere to save time:
I am so sick of dodgy geezer letting agents and their scheming antics. This time, I'm so sure a law has been broken but I don't know what to do.
We didn't want to go up to the asking price for this house, so offered £1050pcm instead. The letting agent came back to us and said another agent had someone lined up with the asking price, so would WE go up to £1100 and he would then put the other £50/month from his fees to top it up to the asking price. I have an email from him outlining the arrangement. Paperwork all went through fine and we got the contract which said we would be paying £1100/month. We signed and I initialled each page too (this is important later on!).
Now then. After we'd moved in, I got a call from the agent saying the LL had picked up the "mistake" in the contract about the rent payment and that he would need to alter it to say £1150/month and we would need to sign the new copy. We never received the new copy and didn't chase it up. We paid £1100 direct to the landlord at the beginning of this month and got a phonecall later that day from the agent saying we actually needed to pay the extra £50 and then he would reimburse us because the LL isn't actually aware of our arrangement and is under the impression that we offered the asking price.
That troubles me. Surely all parties should be aware of a deal like this?!
More troubling, however, is the tenancy agreement, which I've finally had back. On each page, you can see my original initials signature - except for the page relating to the amount of rent, which has been changed to £1150 and my initials are photocopied. Furthermore, they look ever so slightly different to the other pages, leading me to think it's not actually my writing at all but a forgery. The bastard agent has altered the contract and then forged my initials on the page to make it look like I've signed that bit. This is illegal, yes? At the very least it's rather worrying.
What should I do??! Nothing? Just be aware that this agent is clearly quite unscrupulous? Tell the landlord of the arrangement we made?? If I'd known the LL had been kept in the dark over it, I would have walked away from the house and gone with a different, more reputable agent.
I have also discovered that our deposit has not been placed into any of the registered schemes even though we've been living here for 7 weeks now.
HELP.
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Me again! More tenancy issues....
20 replies
SmiteYouWithThunderbolts · 26/06/2013 19:49
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