to think we are not the landlord's servants?

[grumpytenant]

We rent a house, including a washing machine.
On my due date (I am now 40+2) the washing machine broke.
DP called the landlord, couldn't get hold of him, called his son, who can contact his father abroad, blah blah, complete palaver, anyway the long & the short of it is 12 hours later the son turned up to have a fiddle with the washing machine. (We can't just call an engineer because then the landlord won't pay for it.)

He arrived in the middle of dinner time and then co-opted DP into spending 4 hours messing about trying to fix it (doing all the normal stuff we had done already, reading the manual etc), fetching buckets, moving things around, etc. I knew he wouldn't fix it but also knew his dad is too tight to call a pro until he had put his son through all this. DP was knackered before all this started.

Eventually he left, too late to do anything or call anyone, saying he would get an engineer the next day. So: beautiful washing day wasted, no resolution, wasted evening that DP had earmarked for other stuff, and spent chasing around after someone else (while I admittedly sat on my extremely large arse and finished my dinner)

AIBU to think that if you are renting a house you are paying the landlord to sort this shit out, and that if he is too tight to just call a pro to fix the washing machine, he should at least get his son to bring his own helper to fiddle pointlessly about with it?

Some tenants want you to replace everything that breaks immediately with something new, and even then would complain about having to stay in for its delivery and installation. Which is fine if they are paying a massive rent and have a lease in place that requires such standards. However in the real world, its reasonable to fix things and although I agree the 4 hours is annoying (he probably took it apart and had to reassemble it), its not the end of the world.

Its give and take though, isn't it? Personally, I don't rent any more and if I did, I would rent unfurnished so I could choose what appliances to have. In my own home, I have Miele, because the the more expensive purchase price more than pays itself for the fact that they never ever break down and are almost silent.

Our contract includes the white good the LL provides (actually just a cooker) and they are requried to maintain them; in fact they recently repaired as the alst one was shite and had a recurrent fault.

OTOH we have responsibility for everything else as we provided it, and the remaining its- carpets etc- fall into the usual fair wear and tear / our responsibility of more pattern. We tend to sahre in fact: the palce had old carpets when we moved in and they got tatty after 6 years so we replaced one and LL the other.

The white goods ownership-pays-for-repairs thing has been in the contract whenever we've rented with LLs white goods; and when we have rented out with our own.

pingu, sorry, I don't think you're reading what I'm writing. I was saying that, as I understand it, if something is on the inventory, it must be maintained or replaced if broken. This is certainly the case with furnished property. I'm not clear why it's not with unfurnished lets, but I expect you can write a contract to say so. But certainly with my let, the white goods are on the inventory and have to be fixed/replaced if broken.

I would be furious if a landlord/letting agent tried to pretend this wasn't the law.

Betty - sorry, but like hell tenants 'get away with' far more than landlords!

Btw, I do think nijinksky is completely right that you can't expect things to be replaced immediately, and you can't expect brand new swish replacements unless that's what you had before it broke. Our place at the moment has an elderly gas cooker which you light with matches and doesn't have central heating: if the heater broke, or the cooker became unusable, we'd expect to get new ones/repairs within a week or two, but we know they'd be cheap to match with what we had before. Our letting agents are crap but luckily our landlord is good and has suggested that if the cooker breaks, they might but a better quality one and up the rent, if we agree, which is a nice way to work things out.

Littlered - I've been a land lord for 17 years....believe me, we have little rights. Of course, I am a nice LL and have nice tenants but in the past I have had nightmare ones........an I evict someone from MY house who abuses my property and refuses to go....can I hell....not without a lot of charges, stress and bailiffs!

get a better cooker and up the rent
they are taking the piss
what are they buying that requires the rent upping to pay for it??!
how much is a cooker these days?

I thought you had to have somewhere to cook food and wash clothes by law in the UK (although it's never been clear whether that means a sink or a machine!)

I'm sad you've had bad tenants, betty, but the UK has some of the worst tenants' rights in Europe. They're laughable. It's only within the last few years deposit protections schemes even came in.

not1 - I don't think it's taking the piss at all! They made the offer - they're not forcing us to accept it and I think it's a nice thought to give us the option whether we would like a cheap replacement or a more expensive one. Don't see how that's taking advantage at all.

What I would get cross about would be someone thinking they didn't have to keep something on the inventory in good order, but that's different.

"I'm sad you've had bad tenants, betty, but the UK has some of the worst tenants' rights in Europe. They're laughable. It's only within the last few years deposit protections schemes even came in."

Where do you get this from? I'm not aware of this and I'm a lawyer. I know the market is different here, I would say its characterised by tenants being less responsible for themselves and more "entitled". e.g. in Germany tenants often bring all their own appliances, even in city centre properties and the landlord has less to do with the day to day running.

The UK is actually about one of the most heavily regulated rental sectors in the world. In Scotland, we have Houses in Multiple Occupation Regulations with annual or tri-annual inspections, mains smoke alarms in every room and passage way, 30 minute fire resistant doors, its incredibly strict. DP and I are seriously considering buying our next rental property in Germany because its less strict!

Ok, I may be wrong but I get this from comparing what I've experienced here with what friends have family have experienced in Denmark, Germany, France and Spain. Not the whole of Europe by any means, I know, but I thought perhaps quite telling all the same. When I tell people how it works over here they're always stunned.

I don't really see the problem with bringing your own appliances or inspections - both sound good things to me, so I'm wondering if we're talking cross-purposes? I'd say what's toughest on landlords here is the difficulty of evicting people asap if they don't pay the rent on time. What's toughest on tenants is that lettings agents often have no qualms about lying and/or refusing to do anything to uphold tenants' rights. I found out recently that my letting agent can, so far as we can understand, choose to charge us over 100 pounds simply because our tenancy ended fixed-term and well to roll-over, and then charge us again for signing a new fixed-term tenancy a month later. They can charge us for making an inventory, for checking in and checking out. This really shocked people we know from other European countries, and I suppose it might be they've had unusually good experiences and we've had unusually bad ones, but given the number of people and the number of countries they've been in, I have to say I assumed it was a peculiarly UK-type problem.

nijinsky - lots of regulation doesn't necessarily mean better real life rights for people.

I think the trouble with the UK market (at least England - don't know about Scotland) is that it's so hard to enforce rights. If your landlord mucks around with your deposit it is a nightmare to get it back and with assured shorthold tenancies as the norm mean you have no real security of tenure in order to build a life. And if your tenants refuse to go or damage your property, evicting or recovering money beyond the deposit is also a nightmare.

Bad landlords get away with far more than good tenants and bad tenants get away with far more than good landlords. Most of us fall somewhere towards the good end of the spectrum, but the few bad ones are what make everyone overly cautious and suspicious in their dealings with each other.

Basically, we have very little control over the cost of anything apart from the rent itself, and I've been in a place where we actually paid more in additional costs that we did in rent. It's not a minor issue of a few pounds, as people might think.

they are taking the p because they expect you to pay for it
I have no idea how much cookers cost (I rent ) but I'm guessing a few hundred quid and therefore the difference in price will be paid for by their tenants many times over

Well, they don't expect us to pay for a basic cooker, they offered us the option to pay for a better one. It's not like we're incapable of saying 'no thanks'!

I don't honestly see the problem; I think it's very generous.

In Scotland, if you don't have a HMO license or don't abide by the very stringent conditions, you are banned from letting the property, because it then becomes a criminal offence. However it only applies to properties let to two or more unrelated individuals. I'm pretty sure there are similar rules in England and Wales, but which only apply to such properties where they have more than one floor.

In other words, none of this applies to properties let to families. This is probably because it would then encompass most council housing, which would never comply with the standards.

Is it not the case though that in letting, like most things, you get what you pay for and vote with your feet?

Presumably the upgraded cooker that would be worth more rent would be a Raeburn or an Aga or similar, or at least would have halogen hobs and only mean a few pounds a week increase in rent?

Look at any auction catalogue, and you will see that there are plenty of assured tenancies about with rents much less than the market value. However these tend to attract tenants who, not surprsingly, don't want to move out.

Well, what 'stringent conditions'?

You can't 'vote with your feet', btw. Or not in England. You sign for a tenancy, which can only be broken at the point specified in the contract - usually 6 months. You don't get a choice about when to go, and once you've signed it's too late. It really is simply a matter of trying to ask around about which letting agents/landlords seem best, and then hoping they've not lied to you too much about hidden costs.

An example of the ridiculous way in which the whole system is skewed towards the landlord is that you can't rent a place as a tenant without a credit check, which you have to pay for, at whatever arbitrary cost your prospective landlord specifies. In what other line of business do you, as a customer, have to pay for information to the other person's advantage? You can't offer a substitute, you can't realistically contest this, you just have to pay up with no assurance that this is what the credit agency is charging - like everything else it is an opportunity for the landlord to pile extra fees onto the tenant.

This is not as I understand it a legal issue, it is a matter of convention - convention in this country privileges the landlord over the tenant.

YADNBU!

As if you haven't enough to prepare for and deal with at the moment. You aoy rent, if Landlord is abroad - tells me he isn't exactly skint - then he can book an engineer to visit pronto! Bloody timewaster. take the pee total cheek!

pay rent

"In what other line of business do you, as a customer, have to pay for information to the other person's advantage?"

Mortgage applications, applications for phone contracts, generally any applications for credit? In actual fact, the HMO license for my properties costs me £580 per year per property, and I wouldn't describe it as being for my advantage at all. I was putting in secondary glazing in all my rental properties' windows but this budget now goes to the HMO license fees instead.

Little Red Dragon see this description www.highland.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/6D855129-C3DB-493B-9B4D-4007C9BB76D1/0/HMOStandards.pdf

Nijinsky, you don't pay for your own credit check when you take out a mobile phone contract (at least I never have, or been asked to)
Nor have I ever seen a mortgage where you are asked to pay for your own credit check. Nor would a bank do this if you applied for a loan.
Maybe this occasionally happens, but I have never come across them and they do not seem to be the norm. It seems to me entirely logical that if a seller wants to do some research on the party they are considering doing business with, they take on that cost as part of the costs of their business. I don't need a credit check on me - I know I will pay my rent. The landlord needs, or wants, it; he should pay it.

Another fair-ish way of doing it would be to ask the buyer to provide proof of a recent credit check (in the way that you can ask for references); it is however completely unfair to say a. I won't consider you without a credit check, which b. I insist on carrying out through the provider of my choice, and c. you pay for it, that is, you pay whatever arbitrary and large amount I say it costs without having to give you any proof of this.

I can't see why you are complaining about the cost of an HMO licence (which doesn't have anything to do with credit checks as far as I can make out anyway - does it?) - you do business, it comes with costs. It's like taking out insurance to be a driving instructor, or keeping your therapists' qualifications up to date - do you think you should just be allowed to make money off people who need somewhere to live, without having any checks or justifications that you are safely and honestly in business? If you had a restaurant or a pub you would have to pay for all sorts of things - insurances of various kinds, licences, maybe licences to play music or show sport on TV - why do landlords think they are so special they should just be able to buy a place, charge people to live in it, and have no responsibilities?

Not had chance to read the entire thread so I could be repeating here but.....I think the landlord is playing a dangerous game by not letting a professional look at the appliance. His son my have fixed it but he could have overlooked an underlying problem which could have caused electrocution or fire etc. It is the Landlord's duty to ensure all electrical appliances in a 'furnished' let are maintained correctly. He should also have an annual gas and electricity safety certificate too.

Grumpytenant all of the rights and responsibilities of landlord and tenant have long been covered by law. Tenants are just as capable of using the law, e.g. small claims procedures as landlords. Tenants actually leave their leases early all the time and are generally not worth pursuing unless they have caused extensive damage.

I object to the HMO regulations because they were introduced quite recently and the bad landlords still avoid them; it is the good ones like us who pay for extra Government departments to enforce them. Its way OTT and quite arbitary - a cooker for example once fell on a tenant's child in Edinburgh in a council house and now all cookers are required to be chained to the wall!

However, contary to what you think, not all aspects of life are licensed.

But if you dislike landlords and renting so much, why do you do it? Buy your own place, chooose your own washing machine and get it fixed the moment it breaks down (if you can get an engineer that quickly).

The only tenant I ever evicted had a real attitude problem and I gave her two months notice because the relationship between landlord and tenant had broken down. Contrary to your post title, she seemed to think that the landlord was her servant. The final straw was when I got an email on Christmas Eve saying "please can you get (this list of items) fixed over the Christmas hols as I'm away and it won't inconvenience me". One of the items was to upgrade the entry system to a video entry system!

MaisyMooCow this thread is about a landlord taking two days to get a washing machine fixed...

nijinksy, I know you probably wrote without thinking but actually, I hate renting and only wish we could afford to buy a house. Do you know what? We're not all rich. Some of us can't even afford to buy one home, let alone two.