to think that there must be some landlords who will actually do repairs

[Kaloki]

I've had enough of landlords not doing repairs to rented properties.

Some of you may remember my past landlords, but just in case..

Flat 1 - roof and skylight leaked for 4 months and we had to get environmental health involved before anything would be done about it.

Flat 2 - no heating, no electricity. We had to go to a solicitor to get out of our contract as they wouldn't do anything.

Now our current flat, we had a gas leak the other week from next to our meter. So we called out Transco, who discovered that because of the way the meter was fitted you couldn't actually get to the valve to turn off the gas. Turns out they'd notified the landlord a few times before to get it fixed and nothing had been done. So this time they decided to come round and move it/fix it for us and charged the landlord. The landlord then complained that he didn't want to get them to do it (too late) and that he had a part ready to be fitted and was waiting for someone to come round and fit it for us but that they were too ill to do so at the time.

Few problems with that.
One - the part he wanted fitted was not suitable.
Two - the person fitting it is actually a family friend of DP's and wasn't ill, instead they hadn't been told about it.
Three - they aren't corgi registered and wouldn't have been able to fit it anyway.

Now we've been told that all the other repairs around the flat (some of which we told them about the day we moved in) will not be done and that we should pay to fix them ourselves. (This includes a broken boiler and the fact that they've never fitted a smoke alarm)

So AIBU in thinking that maybe one day we will find a landlord who will actually do repairs? Am I just wildly imaginative?

Well that was really kind of you. Not sure I would have been so kind! Some LLs don't have a clue do they?

No - I've rented several flats and houses and my LL's have just been very happy to take the money and do NOTHING in the way of maintenance, updating or repairs.

This is why we are now forced into buying somewhere as current LL selling the house and we've had to scrape deposit together to buy it. Just far too fed up with having no rights to carry on with renting....

Good luck Kaloki - hope you can get something done about your repairs.

Need to sleep...the Letting Agent I employ is fab, and gets everything fixed as soon as possible, when problems arise (rarely); she lets me know what is going on with the house and any potential problems when she does her quarterly inspections.

When i viewed my current flat in 2008 it was gorgeous, i couldn't stop raving about it.then came the day I moved in with the dc.
There was a flood/leak from the upstairs flat. Bobajob Landlord had done work up there and drilled through a water pipe hence my nice shiney flat being soaked.
Ended up paying £40 per night to stay in old flat and in return bobajob LL gave me £20 back out of my deposit.

This began a tirade of crap from him. He accepted me knowing I am on benefits due to ill health and therefore HB would be paying...now the lha for where I am is £249 meaning I would have to pay £90 pm extra - not a problem!!
Then when we had the snow in Feb 2009 I had an accident and ended up house bound with a slipped disc. So i contacted Bobajob and tried to explain the situation and that I was unable to get to the bank to pay the £90 in before I had had chance to explain he was screaming down the phone at me and turned up demanding the money, i then explained I was unable to get out and he threatened me with eviction.

I managed to get a friend to take the money out the bank for me and pay it in the next day.

Then the toilet cistern exploded and I was unable to use the main toilet, the wall in the ensuite started crumbling, the kitchen tap was hanging off, the walls were mouldy as were the carpets, upstairs kept flooding DS1's bedroom which as a result is in a bad way. Cracks started appearing everwhere, I was recieving phone calls at 4am from bobajob.

Then we got to December 2009...DS1 went to run a shower for him and DS2 and I heard an almighty crash...he screamed and I ran to him the entire shower door had fallen off its runner and on top of DS1. - Bobajob still hasn't been out to repair it.

Tonight I put the oven on and the oven door shattered, then had a shower with DS2 and 8 tiles fell off the ensuite shower wall.

I have left 8 messages for bobajob since the door shattered and guess what? he has not replied.

Yet he has had the cheek to put the rent up by £90 without prior warning. He won't evict me because it will cost him too much to carry out the repairs here, he won't do the repairs as I won't or rather cannot pay the extra £180 pm rent.

So here we are almost 2 yrs later and I wish I could find somewhere else to live.

We had three months of no oven and the landlord just telling us to read the instructions properly

They are no refusing to mend the fire in the front room, even though it got a big "dangerous-do not use" label at the last inspection.

All because we are unreliable with rent apparently...ONCE we were 7 days late (with full communication) with £100 out of the £525 rent. When we rang to tell them we were having problems, they told us not to worry about it and pay when we could. If they had said it was a problem, we would have begged and borrowed to pay it. GRRR!