To Ask A Tenant To Wait Til Morning For An Electrician?

[MeantToStopAtTwo]

It's nearly 10pm. Tenant (a youngish bachelor type who lives on his own) just rang to say he has lighting but the rest of the electrics are out. He'd like to have a power shower before he goes to bed and is worried about the stuff in his freezer. Can he call an emergency electrician out?

I told him no. He'll have to make do with a bath instead tonight and wait til morning. Unless of course he's prepared to pay the excess (over what an electrician's daytime rate would be) himself.

AIBU?

I wouldn't call an electrician out at 10pm for this if it were my house and so I think YANBU to say to wait until morning.

Angels, I think that is quite unfair. As a tenant, I don't fix stuff I (probably) know how to fix in my rental property, because if I try and something goes wrong, suddenly I will be left with a massive chunk out of my deposit. For example, my downstairs bathroom tap needs a new washer, and if I owned the house I'd faddle about with it myself.

But as a tenant, I'm not taking a spanner to the tap! If I tugged on it too hard and wrecked it, the LL would probably have my head on a plate.

As a tenant you (well, I) pay about £200-250 a month more than on a mortgage on a similar property. Being a tenant is not a great deal, but one thing is, you don't have responsibility for attending to every little odd job. Being a LL is not just sitting back and receiving £800 a month with no effort...

Angels, you're being completely unfair. We're tenants and we don't try to fix things because we're liable for anything that the lettings agent chooses to say has 'gone wrong'. I would love to be able to give our place a fresh lick of paint (same colour as before would be fine), and I'd happily pay for the paint myself, but we're not allowed to in case we make a mess of it. Same with taps, etc. It's a bit frustrating but if you think for a second or two you can understand why it's ultimately better for tenant and landlord if it's that way. The landlord would be the first to be (justifiably) upset if someone ruined his property with a bad repair.

Y were NBU. Frozen food doesn't suddenly melt overnight.

Did the tenant check that all the switches were up? I have been both a tenant and a landlord and a lot of the time a tenant will pick up the phone and ring before checking something simple.

But then I have had tenants who did simple stuff themselves and tenants who wanted bulbs changed

I personally dont want my tenants trying to fix electrical/plumbing problems themselves to be honest....a light bulb etc then of course but anything that could cause more harm than good...I would rather they phone the agency who would phone me and I would get it sorted.

In all fairness if my tenants electricity went at night then they would have to wait till morning anyway as the agency would not be open and there aint no way I am giving tenants my number!

and dragon you are right - I definately dont want my tenants re-decorating!!! Honestly, in the early days of being a land lord and using a shit agency - you wanna see some of the hideous colours my poor bungalow has been subjected to......

Thank god Changing Rooms is no longer on tv!

I bet, desperate. Our old landlord also spun a great story about a goth-y tenant who asked permission to put in 'picture hooks' ended up putting decorative manacles into the wall! No idea if it was true but it was effective in making me see why he didn't want to let us mess about!

Btw, can I sneakily ask if the tenanty, landlordy people here would sneak a peek at my thread in AIBU?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1182258-To-think-she-should-admit-to-a-mistake-her-company-made

Sorry for the hijack, I just realized the title is crap and I should have put something about it being a tenancy thing in the title.

He's a single man - of course he doesn't matter! So if it was one of your children stuck with no electricity and possibly their entire month's freezer shop you'd be happy some of you? Course you wouldn't!

I rented for years - with some good, some fantastic and one downright shitty landlord. And yes, when I rented - no I wasn't faffing on changing tap washers and the like - it wasn't my property to maintain (and I'm not risking fucking it up and landing with a damage bill tbh), my side of the bargain was to pay the bills, keep the place clean and tidy and generally not piss anyone off - and yes, I would have called my letting agency if I was without power at 10pm at night (after checking the fuse box) because I was paying through the nose for a bloody service. If someone had turned around to me and said "oh you're a single man - you can live without it (not that I am in fact single or male but you get the idea)" then I'd be looking for somewhere new to rent pretty sharpish.

Indeed our landlord lost us as tenants because he decided to leave us with water coming through the roof for a week telling us to put a bucket under it - after it had come through the fitted wardrobes and wrecked half my clothes at the start of the leak - at that point we decided we'd had enough of fretting and praying nothing else went wrong and started planning making our move out of there... so he lost good tenants who paid the rent on time and went above and beyond in terms of doing things like the garden (we'd done things like put proper weed membrane down under his bark chippings he'd laid to pointlessly stop the weeds) because of his own skinflinty tenants are scummy and on the make nature... and the ones he's got in there since then have ripped stuff out of the house and all sorts - we moved down the street because we liked the area so we've seen what's gone on since.

In the end we managed to buy a house (in the same street cos our neighbours are THAT FAB) and the weight off our mind in not having a landlord with the power to make our lives utter hell hanging over us is amazing.... not to mention I don't ever have to look at a sodding magnolia wall ever ever ever again!

empty your ex ll sounds like an arse!!!!!! Sounds like he finally got the tenants he truely deserved!!!

I would be amazed however, if your letting agency would answer the phone at 10pm, lol.....5.01pm and you would prob have a problem

YANBU - I am a landlord and a tenant, and I would check the trip switches first, then do the appliance check. It's fairly obvious what ring main it's on and where the problem lies.

I would ask him what he plugged in that tripped out the sockets. Then tell him to unplug it and flick the switch on the fuse board.

As a work-around... learnt from bitter experience as my husband, and then his father afterwards (serves him right for taking the piss out of his son) drilled through a cable in the walls in our new house...

The cooker is usually on a separate circuit and the cooker socket quite often has a plug point in it... so when the muppet father and son squad knocked all our sockets out, we got an extension cable and ran the fridge and freezer off the cooker socket overnight to save the frozen food (because single man or not if he's just done his month's freezer shopping after getting paid it's a fair chunk of cash to have at risk).

Sadly our exLL happens to own a house in the really desirable school catchment and in a nice part of town (hence us staying here - as well as the fabbo neighbours) so the damn place lets out the day it goes onto the market and he's on a cushy number... even if he's such a pillock he ripped the bathroom out to make an extra bedroom (but left the pipework boxed in so the skirting board is about half a foot away from the walls) and then shoved the bath in literally under the stairs.

Our letting agency has a 24 hour number, in our previous place we had the landlords mobile and home number for emergencies. I'm amazed that some landlords would not provide any sort of emergency contact. Ok, it's prob not urgent in this instance but I'd be pretty annoyed if my boiler broke at 5.10pm on a Friday and I wasn't able to get in touch with anyone.

mi555lc "It sounds like the fuse box. You need to sort it now if you can or reimburse him for all contents of freezer if it defrosts and you go round and wait for the electrician tomorrow. He is paying off your mortgage so you are responsible for stuff like this as l lord."

Wrong. On so many counts. Most standard leases state that landlords do not have responsibility for personal possessions of the tenant and that its up to them to take out personal contents insurance.

Leaving a tenant overnight with a partial electricity supply and hot water is not an emergency situation that warrants instant repair as long as the landlord gets it fixed within a reasonable time.

Secondly, there are plenty of rental properties where tenants are actually subsidised by the landlord ie there is a gap between how much the mortgage costs and how much rent comes in. Never mind the substantial deposit the landlord will have had to pay.

Time to get the chip off your shoulder.

Tyler - there is no way I would ever let a tenant have my phone number - that is what I pay my agency money to do! Up to them if they have a 24 hour emergency number (they prob do, never thought about it to behonest) but they aint having mine!

Because I manage my own properties, I do in effect provide a 24 hour service. Even when I'm on holiday. Most tenants are sensible but I did have one who decided to be a pain - lots of phone calls, aggressive attitude, email on Christmas Eve with a long list of items she would liked fixed (some of them upgrades eg she wanted a mixer tap and videoentry system) and could I get them done "asap cos she was away and wouldn't be disturbing her". She is the only tenant I have ever given notice to and boy, was it a shock to her, because she had a fantastic flat (used to be my own) for a good rent, and could never have afforded to buy in that area. But in actual fact with the mortgage and what with her needing constant attention and breaking things, she was costing me way more money than the rent was bringing in.

I've also had to get an electrician out instantly, during daytime, to a "serious electrical fault" which turned out to be a tripped fuse - despite my describing to the tenant how to untrip it. The same tenant constantly complained the central heating was broken but in actual fact could not work the timer programme.

Sometimes things cannot be fixed instantly. So many boilers now are Italian, and if a part has to be ordered to fix them, it can take a week or so.

I might provide a 24 hour telephone but I don't provide a 24 hour concierge service. For this I would charge, oh lets think, at least another £500 a month on top of rent.

My tenants have both mine and DH'a mobile numbers as well as personal email. I am happy for them to call whenever they need to. In this circumstance we would talk them through checking the fuse and flicking the breaker, and then if that had failed I would tell them that come 0830 I would find them a reputable electrician (I made a point of sourcing a few good tradesmen when I moved out and rented it as DH is too busy to fix everything.) Then if they were working or whatever and couldn't be there I would go and be there if necessary. Involving an 8 month old baby and either an hour's drive if I can get the car or a half hour walk, 45 min train ride then 20 min walk.

You can be a good landlord without throwing good money after bed thoughtlessly.

I'm selling my flat now and have reduced the rent by £100 per month so they can save for fees as they are on a low income.

Yeah, of course if I managed it myself then I would give my contact number but as I use an agency I give them the pleasure, lol.

I think sometimes people think all landlords are minted...........they actually fail to see how little rights we actually get...the tenants have far more rights in our houses than we do! They forget that we might actually need our rental money to pay the mortgage.....being a LL can be brilliant, it can also be a real pain!

Ninky - you sound like a very decent LL bless you!!

Like others have said I'd suggest he check the fuses/circuit breakers. I sometimes think people shouldn't be classed as adults and allowed to leave home when they can't manage the simplest things,

However YABU if you think you can take rent and then shrug off the responsibilities that go with being a landlord. This is YOUR problem.

I expect a lot of people think renting out properties is a magical way to make money without much effort, but there is more to it than that.

Desperate, I don't think all LLs are minted, but IME at least, they are generally baby boomer age couples who (obv) own their own properties.

For people in their early 30s like me, it's going to be a lot harder to get onto the rental ladder like they did. I'm not bitter, but it's a skewed marketplace.

Plus LLs can always give you notice and effectively deprive you of your home with relatively little notice time. Finding a new home when you work full time with 1-2 mos' notice within commuting distance of work isn't simple. I know tenants can give notice too, but losing a few hundred pounds a month temporarily is not the same as being required to move all your family and possessions.

Revolting - I am a LL and am so not minted, lol.......

I can give notice granted (we do have to give 2 months and can only serve it on a certain date) but it doesn't necessarily mean my tenant will vacate when he is supposed to. Most LL will only give notice if they need to move back in, the tenants are bad, or some major problem like that, they dont give notice just at the drop of the hat as it is an upheaval for them too.

I gave notice to some ghastly tenants once (a complete nightmare, left a pair of soiled underpants as a leaving gift for me...thanks for that) - they didnt leave when they were supposed to, the council instructed them to stay untill the bailiffs came, they left the day before.....months without paying rent, cost me a lot of money (not just hundreds) in loss of rental, cleaning up their shit etc etc............ If a tenant doesnt pay their rent they can still live in MY house and there isnt a thing I can do about it.......

Being a LL or tenant has good and bad's I'm sure. Like onagar says its not just a case of taking money and saying thanks very much....if only life were that simple, lol

You are a Landlord he is your tenant , he pays you rent, You are being unreasonable, What will you say to him if he deducts £X from his next months rent because he was without electricity in part of his home for a night???

oldwomaninashoe "What will you say to him if he deducts £X from his next months rent because he was without electricity in part of his home for a night???" that would be illegal, and would place the tenant in arrears - it is not for the tenant to decide compensation amounts, but the courts, and the courts would not award compensation in this case as it is completely reasonable to have the fault fixed in a day or two. It is what most people would do in their own property which is deemed reasonable, and in this case the majority of people would wait until morning to call out an electrician in their own home.

Oldwomaninashoe this would make the tenant in breach of their tenancy agreement. As the landlord has answered the tenant's phone call and advised him that it is a non-emergency situation that will be dealt with the next morning, the landlord is acting reasonably.

I would write a couple of shirty letters to the non-paying tenant requesting payment asap and advising they were in breach of contract. If payment was not made up, I would have no choice but to start eviction proceedings.

I just do not want tenants who think they have the right to randomly deduct rent whenever anything breaks. This is the nature of living in a property, whether its your own or anyone else's. There is no magic wand that a landlord can wave that makes nothing ever go wrong in a rented property. All they are expected to do by law is to deal with it reasonably in the circumstances. There is no right under law for a tenant to stop paying rent whenever something breaks. The tenant is still getting the rest of the property and its facilities after all. If things were the way you suggest, I could imagine some tenants deliberately breaking things so that they didn't have to pay rent at all.

I just do not want tenants who think they have the right to randomly deduct rent whenever anything breaks. This is the nature of living in a property, whether its your own or anyone else's

Amen to that Nijinsky - I am a decent LL, I always get stuff sorted and I absolutely refuse to be held to ransome by tenants. I had one tenant deliberately break the toilet coz she wanted a new suite. Thank you and goodnight!!