Just raised a dispute with landlord with help of dps

[Myfoofneedspruning]

Hi there,

We checked out of the place mid-March and the landlord wanted proof of no more bills associated to his property, by this, understand he wanted the hard copy of the bills proving that. It took a while to get these paperwork but we gave him everything he needed. Still no deposit has been given back so we raised a dispute with dps. My question is to those who had to dispute : how long does the process last ? I sent my mail to dps this morning. Thank you !

I have no idea but good for you!

He started talking to us like crap almost the moment we moved in his property...we had to move. I didn't want to rent from anyone like that. We left the house spotless (he said it himself) but he just want to be difficult.

Toughasoldboots - what do you mean the landlord is not allowed to withhold our deposit for bills ? To give you a exemple of how petty he is : to prove we used professional cleaners, we had to present the hard copy of the invoice...an invoice sent by mail was not good enough...the professional cleaners never wanted to send us a hard copy of the invoice, we had to print out the invoice we were sent by mail...

Toughasoldboots - we had get hard copy proof from TV licence and all utility bills...he treated us like criminals on the day of check out (I got kicked out of the house because I didn't accept him talking to us like crap)...we never paid the rent late, we took excellent care of the property. I despise him.

Yes he is a bully

I have heard from lots of ppl who just let an abusive ll keep the deposit without a fight. Dont let him.

He lives almost next door to me now, don't worry I'll harass him if he carry on. Once I remember he threatened us to cut our water because I was not answering fast enough one of his demand...

Actually if your contract says you need to have it professionally cleaned, then you do need to present an invoice. And yes, he may well need a hard copy for his records.

All your utility and council bills do need to be closed out and this is usually part of the checkout. Your landlord is responsible for paying the utility bills between tenants. Decent tenants close out their bills and then when the landord gets new tenant, he/she calls in with new name and also gets sent an invoice for the in-between period.

Yours may have just been screwed over by his last tenant. I know when I bought my first flat, I had a nightmare time with utilities as previous owners did nothing (even started getting bailifs at door for their outstanding credit card debts, the wankers).

Oh and I agree he in particular sounds awful.

Is this the deposit scheme?
My friend did this, took 8/12 weeks but she got almost all of her deposit returned (they tried to keep most)
If you have evidence, or landlord doesn't, you should be ok.

Good luck

Hi there

Good for you for taking action like this, more power to you! Worth noting that you can leave a review of this property (and the landlord!) on rentalraters.com (FULL DISCLOSURE: I set up this site!). It only takes a minute to do but it could prevent another tenant from being stung like this.

Nice one flamingnora!

This was recommended on MN the other day

www.generationrent.org/get_involved

Thank you so much for that ! I'm definitely going to leave a review, will hate another family going through what we went through.