I know about raising a dispute with the deposit scheme but wanted to post here first.
Basically we moved out of a property in mid June and have been emailing back and forth with the LL since then as we don't agree on how much of our deposit they want to hold back. Since our last email they took two weeks to respond and when I chased them came back to say they now wanted more of our deposit than they originally asked for (1200 instead of 1000), and they weren't prepared to agree to return any of it as they "reserved the right" to request more. E.g. originally they said they weren't going to charge us for repainting and now they say they are going to charge us for repainting. They say if we agree to not go to dispute they will accept the original amount of £1000. This feels very much like blackmail to me.
I haven't replied to their last email. Should I now raise a dispute based on the entire deposit amount, or the amount stated in their initial email? I need a figure to give to the TDS and I know they like you to have tried to resolve it between you first. If I write back a very short email to LL saying we no longer feel they are engaging in good faith and therefore per their last email will refer the full deposit amount to the deposit scheme, will that be OK? Will the fact they said one amount then changed their minds work in our favour?
Any experience welcome, I don't want to do the wrong thing.