PLEASE BEAR WITH ME - slightly long.
We are moving into a rented property. Paid the rent and deposit to agency and were given a date when house would be ready as refurbishment work was still being done in it. Picked up keys on date and was told that there was just a very minor item to be finished and the landlord would come the next day to do this.
Got to the house (without taking over our furniture thankfully) to find the landlords workmen there with tools over every surface putting all new doors on all the rooms and some other stuff. We were surprised at this as surely as we had taken possesion of the keys, no one should have been in there without our permission? They told us that they needed a few hours to finish off so we left. The agency then called us to ask us to keep our kids out of the property until the workmen had finished as it was dangerous in there. FFFS why were we given the keys then???? The workmen did not finish in there until 7pm so we could not move in on that day . DH had to work on the following afternoon so we did not try to move in until the following weekend (this Friday).
DH and friend went over with a van and started moving stuff in. Landlady was expecting British Gas to come in to check the gas supply (no idea why this was not done before we were given the keys the week before!!). Gas man came and declared that the gas had to be turned off as there was a gas leak!! Turns out that letting agency was aware there was a gas leak via their maintenance man and told the landlady it had to be fixed but they did not bother to tell us and were going to let us move in with a bloody gas leak . Landlady has now been told that the house needs a whole new boiler so gas is off until this can be done next week. Yet again we have not been able to move in (would have no hot water and house has a completely gas oven so can't cook). Luckily we can stay in our old house until next Friday but are having to live with half our furniture here and half over there .
I am bloody pissed of that this gas leak (apparently it was below the legal limit but if this was so why did the BG man turn the gas off??) was not rectified before we were given the keys, let alone the other building work. We could have lived there for a week with the potential of the house being blown up!! I am going to make it clear to the letting agency tomorrow that we will be deducting money from next months rent as we should not have paid a penny in rent until the house was ready to move into which will be approximately 2 weeks later than it should have been. AIBU???