To think £20 to change single light bulb is excessive?

[The2Omicronnies]

Background: recently rented a house for 6 months whilst current house being built. Previous tenant caused lots of wear of tear, all documented in inventory.

House was pretty filthy when we moved in (inch deep stagnant water in dishwasher & it stank, orange scum all over shower tray / tiles / shower head, long grass in garden, dirty old socks left in bedroom, orange grease all over cooker hood). I noted all this and added to inventory, but we dealt with it all ourselves and thoroughly cleaned it all up. When we vacated the property, it was in much better condition than when we moved in. Check-out inventory confirms this.

Landlord tried to deduct lots from our £3k deposit to cover damage caused by previous tenant. Fortunately, we used photos from both inventories to show it was not caused by us. Landlord conceded on all.

However, he wants to charge us £20 to change one single lightbulb which I will admit I did not notice had even blown. This was remiss of me, but I feel like he’s taking the piss with this cost.

Would you dispute this, or let it go? I feel aggrieved because we really looked after the house and went above & beyond without making it the landlord’s problem, and after he tried to shaft us already, it feels unreasonable.

We had £50 deducted from our deposit to change a lightbulb.

Bastards didn’t even give us a chance to make good, even thought we left the property gleaming.

Ok, maybe I’m being unreasonable then! £50?! Did you accept it?

Is it an LED? Some styles the bulb itself can cost a few and including travel to property/minimum call out type charge its prob less than an hour of a handymans time

If someone has to go out and get the lightbulb from the shop that has a time cost. If I employed someone and they installed a lightbulb they would expect paying for their time.

I understand your perspective but peoples time has a cost.

I pay a lot more than that for someone to go out to a house to change a bulb. It's the whole call-out fee, travelling, billing, it all adds up. I don't live locally, so I suck it up when I'm charged over £100 for a simple bit of DIY.

They weren’t LED, but thank you for giving me another perspective. I suppose it’s frustrating (and perhaps I should have mentioned previously), that the landlord lives in the same town.

I have rental properties myself, and when I have good tenants, I always give them leeway, but I realise it’s unreasonable to expect that from someone else. Looks like I’ll be sucking it up!

Proof it had blown while you lived there? Lights can go at any time

I think in your circumstances, as you had spent time, effort and money bringing someone else's property up to a reasonable condition, then the Landlord should have taken that into account and let it go - especially as a pp said, it could have blown after you left......

However if someone were ever called out just to change a lightbulb then I can see it would involve a call out fee, which is for admin, travel, petrol to get there / tiny amount towards depreciation on the van, staff time, cost of bulb, the fact the van has to carry stock of all sorts of light bulbs and a ladder etc etc, so £20 is easily justified.

It'll be the call out charge to replace it, or a contribution towards the landlord's travel cost for going and buying the bulb too. In the context of things I'd suck it up I think.

DSis has a rental property and was recently charged £75 for a repair. When she enquired what it was, the agent said they needed a new shower head. Not an actual plumbing job, just unscrew the old shower head, and screw a new one in that probably cost about £15.

My DS landlord tried to withhold a substanial amount of their deposit for a table that landlord had actually removed when they firstmoved in and for a pen being left on the floor of his flatmates room! He was fuming as they had both scrubbed the place clean, we had replaced lighting that never worked when they moved in and they had the oven professionally cleaned at their own expense. He appealed to the protection scheme and they got the full deposit back.

For the sake of £20 I'd be tempted just to pay it and be done with it, but it is taking the piss.

Lightbulbs are consumables, the landlord has no way of proving it was blown when you moved out and the idea that he needs to pay someone else to make a special trip just to replace a bulb is clearly nonsense. You would just swap it as part of another trip or if there are new people in they would have just stuck a bulb in without a seconds thought.

Jeez, I'd post a lightbulb to the new tenant. £20 is ridiculous. Can't be a necessary bulb if you didn't notice it had blown, and tbh I'd expect the landlord to just replace it without being this petty.