I would have typed a post on Saturday evening but I stopped myself. Words written when full of anger are seldom good and likely less accurate. Now a couple of days have passed and I’m a little more level headed I suspect my words will be somewhat better selected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still angry but not steaming as I was.
Friday evening Ben, Kita, Mum (thanks Mum) and I set about cleaning our old house, working pretty much straight through the evening with all manner of cloth and chemical. Come about 11pm the old house was in a pretty good state. Clean, tidy and ready to be given back.
Saturday morning Ben and I went in the house about 9am and the first thing I said was “Where’s the post?” shortly followed by “Why’s the bed been pulled out?”. From that moment on I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach it wasn’t going to be quite as good a day as the glorious sunshine would suggest it should be.
We’d arranged for the landlady to go through the checking out process at 10am and sure enough she was there promptly on time. The first thing she produced was a letter addressed to the occupier of our Reading place from Thames Water. She thought it was evidence we’d not paid the water bill. In truth it’s a fairly harmless letter, just asking for the new occupier to set-up a new account as I’d cancelled ours. I know, I’d opened it a couple of days ago and left it in the house for the new tenants.
A part of me wishes I’d been a lot less tired and a bit sharper witted. Our landlady had been in our property after we’d left Friday night and picked up the post. That’s a breach of contract, entering the property without our consent whilst we still held the tenancy. If I’d have been more awake and a little quicker I suspect none of what followed would have happened. Alas, it’s a lesson learnt.
She basically complained about the state of cleanliness of the property throughout. In fact I think the only thing she was happy with was the hob which was shining…… as was most of the house. Many hours passed and many comments were made and ultimately Ben and I somewhat gave in on some points which means we’re losing a significant chunk of our deposit. On reflection we could have been a lot tougher, heck based on the previous paragraph we could have been very tough indeed.
In all honesty though my heart wasn’t in it. At the moment there are just too many more important things going on in my life that fighting for some money pails in comparison. Another time and I suspect I’d have tried a lot harder, or more to the point taken something of a gamble. You see a big part of our problem was our letting agents.
The reason, the only real reason Ben and I negotiated with the landlady direct was because we both felt it would have been a far bigger, messier fight with the agents. Honestly as I type this I’m sure the agents would have gone for more like 85% of our deposit and we’d be fighting tooth and nail over it for the next 6 months. In my final year of uni and getting married in a few months I just didn’t fancy that over my head. If you’re looking to move to Reading drop me a message and I’ll tell you who to avoid!
There were so many silly little details on Saturday that I could write a book on them. It wouldn’t do anyone much good apart from this, my intentions to own the roof over my head have never been stronger.
So Saturday was a write off, I was exhausted mentally and physically and didn’t fancy moving any more boxes into Portsmouth that evening. Sunday though was a success. After a much needed lazy start to the day we went down to our flat in Southsea and moved the final car loads of stuff in and began living there.
We unboxed a bit, got the TV kind of working and made the bed. Thankfully though we both felt like a walk and so we strolled along the beach, laughing and enjoying one another’s company like we haven’t in quite a long time. It was a really great walk, probably the most romantic thing we’ve done since Sorrento last summer.
That would have been a good way to finish the weekend but it got better. As we were aimlessly wondering around we came across quite a crowd. Not really knowing what was going on (apart from a big boat on the grass) we stuck around and to our delight a fantastic firework show took place marking the end of Portsmouth’s Festivities, celebrating 500 years since the ascension of Henry VIII.
So a great way to end a very stressful weekend.
Dan
29th June 2009
4:23 pm
This makes me angry – agents and landlords are a mixed bunch. Generally, agents are out for every penny. Landlords can be more helpful, but only if you’re lucky. Our last landlord was really laid back and was just happy the house still had four walls – our previous landlord had an independant inventory who wanted money to have the sheets ironed (even though we’d bought new ones!). I think the one thing to take away is to ALWAYS require the use of an independent inventory and be heavy on any breaches of contract.