This hair-splitting lettings agent got people sharing their deposit nightmares

Poke Staff. Updated November 29th, 2022

Reddit user u/Dukeofthumbs shared a couple of photos they’d been saving for a while, over on r/CasualUK, with the heading –

Pics from our old letting agent’s check out report. Still baffles me.

We were baffled too. Is she pointing at the smallest hairs still visible to the naked eye? Is she touching that toilet?

u/Dukeofthumbs added

We ended up paying £70 after contesting an absolute heap of claims (a few claims were justified, many obviously were not).

The agent who did the check out was one of the rudest people I’ve met. Sales type who shouts over every single word you say. She was patronising, passive aggressive and would turn up late or not at all for inspections that we would organise our working days around. However the rest of the people at the letting agents were brilliant and genuinely nice people.

Other Redditors could hardly believe the pettiness. Some brought their best sarcasm game.

Clearly that requires a specialist cleaning team at a cost of £500.
J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A

I’d say if something is small enough to need pointing to in order to stand out in a photo, it’s not a big enough deal to be mentioned.
Vickimus1987

It makes me very uncomfortable how close she has her finger to a stranger’s toilet pube.
Dietcephius

All prospective Four in a Bed contestants take note.
Jackomo

Some people had stories of their own about threatened deposits.

I got charged £250 once for the wind pulling the roof off the shed the day before I moved out (I told them when it happened, with photos). I’d forgotten that I was responsible for the weather.
Dulgoron

A friend at university had a thing in their contract stating that any defective light bulbs would have to be replaced by a professional electrician (at a fee that even the biggest cowboy would call “extortionate”). Result? Friend walking around their house on the last day of tenancy with a copy of that day’s newspaper, taking photos of every single light turned on.
AtomDoctor

Landlord tried to charge us for slug trails on the carpet.

We told him there were slugs. Spent my whole fucking life cleaning up slug trails when I lived there.

“That’s no excuse for not wiping them up before you left”

We did. But the thing about a slug infestation is that they come out EVERY night.
Net-negligence

I had an exit inspection years ago that I was present for where they pointed out that I’d forgotten to clean the drawer of the washing machine (where the powder goes etc) – I instantly cleaned it in front of them and they were like “well it’s a bit late now isn’t it?”

Then tried to deduct £200 from our deposit for having it done professionally!
RoyalConflict1

I had one that sent a picture of dirt in the shower base and advised keeping the deposit I then sent pictures of the new shower they had fitted for us and it looked different and not to use old photos. I got my full deposit back.
Pculliox

My student landlord tried to charge me £450 for cleaning a small carpet stain and dusting the top of a wardrobe. I got a quote from a cleaner (under £100) for cleaning the carpet and offered to pay that since it was my fault, but she refused to back down on the dusty wardrobe.

Contested it through deposit protection and turns out she hadn’t done a new inventory in our second year there, and since one of the tenants had moved out between the two years it counted as a new contract and her old inventory wasn’t valid. She got nothing as there was no way of proving the condition the house was in when we moved in.
Banjee10

Our bathroom extractor fan at university caught fire, set the house on fire and damaged everything with smoke.

They refused to get a professional cleaning team in and sent round a couple of young estate agents to clean up. The house was pretty much fucked from smoke damage… They tried to tell us on checkout that the house was a tip and they were keeping our deposit… No chance.
Cautious-Yam2893

They tried to charge me £65 for dust on a lampshade.
Thelover1964fg

We had one that was “indents left in carpet from wardrobe”. If they’d specified we needed a floating wardrobe we could have looked into it.
PleaseDontTouchThose

10.

I lost my last deposit to the landlord getting contractors in the re-do the roof that had fallen in.

Apparently it’s my responsibility to clean up after them, despite having already left the property by that point, because of you know, the fucking roof falling in.

It went to the DPS guys and the landlord won the case. Fuck that landlord, fuck the estate agents, and fuck whoever reviewed that case.
Pew___

u/matej86 empathised.

Three universal truths back when I was renting: I have always cleaned the house before moving out, I have always been billed for cleaning, I have never moved into somewhere that was clean.

Sometimes, good landlords protect their tenants against bad letting agents.

I was SO lucky once that the actual landlord showed up before the letting agent. I’d never met him before, and he was delighted with the state we’d left the place in and said he’d transfer back over the whole deposit to us the next day (which he did).

20 minutes later, the jobsworth from Ludlow Thompson shows up and starts writing down every tiny flake of paint gone and tried to dispute £250 of damage. My landlord said it was understandable wear and tear, and he was having the flat repainted anyway. An absolute stroke of luck.
Mad_Radge

When moving in, a bed frame fell and put about a 10p sized hole in the wall, i fixed it up and covered the hole with plaster and sanded it down but i didn’t paint it as I simply didn’t have enough paint to do the while wall.

So the landlord pops over to discuss something else and I show him the wall, he was really impressed and said not to worry about painting. 2 or so days later we have a house inspection and my god you’d think that covered hole in the wall was massive and poorly done as the estate agent starts tutting and then saying how they will have to charge us for getting a massive part of the wall cut out and replaced.

I laughed and told them to call the landlord right now and tell him that. They refused so I did, and he was not happy with them at all.
PupperPetterBean

Someone named u/bambinoquin blended their petty letting agent story with a confession.

I once got sent a picture of a stem that belonged to some grapes I ate as I was packing. But to be fair, they didn’t notice I had cellotaped the oven door back on, so you win some you lose some.

Source r/CasualUK Image Ethan Wilkinson on Unsplash