My partner and I moved into a rental 8 months ago. It was rented via an estate agency company but is managed by the landlord. A few months after moving in, we started noticing holes in our wollen clothing, but were not seeing moths or larvae in the flat at that point. We tried to control what we thought was a small moth infestation with the usual stuff (cleaning, hoovering, washing clothes, using vacuum sealed bags, moth balls/sachets/sprays/cedar balls), but since the weather has got warmer, things got out of control and we started seeing moths everywhere, in all stages including pupae, larvae and adult moths.
I spent literally 10 days deep cleaning the flat and washing, drying and ironing all our clothes and bed linen, and got rid of everything we were not using, including 1/3 of my clothes. During that cleaning process (for which I had to use 2 weeks of annual leave) I found clear signs of significant moth damage to the carpets. A quick look at the inventory pictures showed that the damage was already there before we moved in, but we had barely noticed it as we had never had moths and thought the carpets were just a bit old and worn. I can’t tell exactly if the carpet damage has gotten worse, as the inventory pictures only show a small part of the living room carpet.
We tried to contact our landlord through the usual channels of emails, telephone, voicemail, texts and whatsapp, for 3 weeks with no success. Only a few days ago I decided to contact him for a minor electrical issue (which honestly didn’t bother me that much) and, lo and behold, we replied within 20 minutes. A few days later I managed to get him to phone me. He agreed to get the electrical issue fixed but was adamant that the moths were not his problem. He was extremely rude and patronising, and suggested that 1) the moth infestation was our fault and 2) it was ‘not that hard’ to control the problem, as we could buy some moth balls to put in our drawers!
He went on to say that the contract drawn by the estate agents states that pests and vermin should be dealt with by the tenant. Actually, the tenancy agreement reads: “tenant should take reasonable precautions to prevent infestation of the property by vermin (...). If infestation occurs due to something done or not done by the tenant, tenant should pay the costs of removing the infestation”.
My argument is: there is clear photographic documentation that the carpet had been eaten by moths before we moved in, and the tenancy agreement talks about ‘prevention’ where the infestation was already installed prior to our arrival. Also, to get rid of the moths in the carpets would involve professional pest control and professional carpet cleaning, which are way beyond ‘reasonable precautions’. Third, the agreement talks about the tenant being responsible for dealing with infestations cause by things ‘done or not done’ by the tenants, which again was not the case as we did not bring the moths in, the carpets show that they were well installed already.
I spoke to the department that deals with private tenancies at our local coucil. They said the tenancy law states that landlords have to pay for damages that come from the flat’s structure, and the carpets could be seen as that. However, the council only do inspections for pests that cause severe health hazards eg mice and not for moths. They said we could take legal action against the landlord if we could prove that the infestation came from the carpet, but that that option is obviously a costly and lengthy process.
Anyway, long story over, this is seriously bothering me and I think he is in the wrong. Not to mention that I’m exhausted for dealing with this intensively for over 3 weeks now and feeling shocked by how rude and patronising he was on the phone, as well as ignoring us for 3 weeks for no good reason. We are planning to buy our own place soon, but searching for a property and getting e everything sorted will take at least a year, so we can’t easily move out of this flat until then. Any advice on how to deal with this landlord much appreciated.