Renters - what do you call the landlord/letting agents for?

[Tomorrowisalatterday]

I have been a landlord for a while and I have found some tenants ask things that I just find really surprising. Some examples:

The washing machine door is locked and won't open - this was fixed by turning off and on at the wall

Not knowing how to set the oven clock - googling the instructions and reading them out on the phone worked

Hot water not working - switch had tripped and needed turning back

Wanting to be talked through how to set the boiler for specific times - we left the manual but even if we hadn't, it's 2022 and every manual is online

Our current set of tenants are young city professionals earning over 80k each, they clearly can't be stupid but it feels like they can't do anything for themselves. Is this just normal now?

I wouldn't have asked my landlords any of those things and if I couldn't figure out would probably have asked parents when younger for help first. I think they just don't want to look it up for themselves. I've surprisingly met quite a few people like this now though none are British born and all has people to do things for them. They would not look through a manual etc but would call and ask someone. Some of my in laws are like this to the extent that they would throw the manual at us to figure it out for them. They may feel that's it's part of what they are paying for.

I had a tenant who was in her late twenties, professional job, and this was this first time she'd lived independently of her parents.

She contacted the letting agent frequently for the first few months.

Her "problems" included a door handle which "might fall off", a bit of a draught (in a house which is over 100 years old) when all the internal doors were open, and the washing machine (which I had sold to her for £1 as it was pretty old but would likely last a bit longer, which it duly did) making a noise on the spin cycle.

The last straw for the letting agent was when the tenant sent a video of water leaking in through kitchen windows - with no attempt to stop it or mop it up - on a day when the whole area was affected by severe flooding and the letting agent had piled sandbags against her office front door and was baling water out her back door. I'm not fully aware of what was said that day, but the tenant was a lot quieter after that.

The latest from mine is that they think the heating isn't working but there is nothing flashing and no error codes on the boiler. On further questioning, they want someone to show them how to use the heating system as it's "extremely complicated"

Is this a landlord responsibility? I don't really want to pay a heating engineer to go round and talk them through the manual.

Sort of tempted to get them to send a photo of the boiler to confirm it looks fine and then ask them to read the manual and work it out. Is that harsh?

We actually have agents managing it but they are shit at this sort of thing - they will sort a contractor out but won't get involved with taking common sense to the tenants

Sounds very stressful for you OP. Maybe you should consider a different easier way of making money.

My last tenant was the most labour intensive so far, more clueless even than a household of students. Newly divorced and clearly had always had someone else to do basic home maintenance. Some highlights:
The light is in my bedroom is broken can you come and fix it ( the lightbulb just needed changing, she had no idea). When I pointed out to her that under the AST it was her responsibility, she broke it trying to prise it out.
The cooker is broken I need a new one/ send someone out to fix it ( it was new when she moved in). In fact the rings were so clogged with congealed fat the spark didn’t ignite, I spent an hour cleaning it with interdental brushes.
Then best of all, after she left it turned out she ( or more likely her boyfriend) had drilled a hole in the roof tiles to get a TV cable through. By the time it became apparent she was long gone and deposit refunded. Cost to me to get tiles fixed after a leak into new tenants bedroom: £200 and I suspect I haven’t heard the las to it.
No one ( unless they are a landlord) is going to feel sorry for us. But the hassle some tenants can cause is considerable.