Anyone have any experience of arbitration via the DPS?

[TwistinMyMelon]

I do not want to reveal too many details of my situation as it is outing, but my former landlord and their agent are withholding my deposit based on a number of false claims. I have evidence that contradicts their claims and they have been dishonest in their communications with me so far.

I cannot trust them to resolve this fairly so I'm pushing for arbitration however they are stalling and I believe deliberately delaying this.

Does anyone have any experience of anything similar and would be willing to share how things went?

I am a reasonable person but won't agree to things I did not do, I was a good tenant, always paid my (very high) rent and left the place in an immaculate condition.

I am lucky that I do not need the money or a reference as I think I might have agreed to pay for damage that was not done by me just to get a partial deposit and a reference! I have rented umpteen properties over the years and have never experienced anything like this before. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

What have the DPS told you?

Our landlord once tried to claim more than the deposit amount, long story but we let her builders in during the last few weeks (at her request) and they caused damage.

The DPS side is fairly straight forward. You just need to log on and request your deposit back they then have a certain amount of days to dispute and upload their evidence/commentary, if they don’t it should be returned. You can then upload yours and this will be reviewed and judgement will be made.

In our case we had about £100 worth of deduction awarded to the landlord and received the rest. We used the check in/out inventory, photos I had taken and emails between the landlord and myself.

As the value was over the value of the deposit she also opened a case with small claims court. This ended up in arbitration where we had a mediator calling her/us repeatedly in turn until we came out with an agreed outcome.