Tenant questions

Bacchus

Hi, I'm looking for advice on a few issues my housemates and I have with our newly rented townhouse in Cork. First off, we went with a rental agency as we figured they'd be much more professional than dealing with a landlord directly. The house itself is a very nice little 4 bedroomed townhouse. After a week in there we have a number of problems and I'd like to know where we stand with each of them.

1: When we first moved in we took note of any damaged funiture, walls, kitchen appliances etc. A couple of things in specific we asked to be fixed/replaced such as towel rail in bathroom (held together by a pencil at the moment), microwave (the roof of which is peeling off and is a health hazard) and two tables with broken legs. That was about 7 working days ago and nothing has been done. Worst of all is they have to unpacked wardrobes sitting in our hall which are not meant for our house. We asked for them to be taken away and this has not been done either. Legally, what can we do to make them comply with our requests because all we get back when we call is "we're on it, it'll be done in the next few days".

2: We decided to hover the house yesterday (for the first time) and found that the hover in the house is a piece of ****. It has no suction and is on it's last legs. Legally, can we request a new one? I'm not sure because technically we never checked it when we were viewing the house and the agency could just say that it was like that when we viewed and therefore haven't a leg to stand on.

3: Bedroom keys. When viewing the house, the downstairs bedroom had a key in the door and the 3 upstairs bedrooms had a lock/bolt type thing (like what you'd find on a front or back door of a house). I didn't notice there were no keys in them when we viewed but assumed we would get them when we moved in. When we did move in we were told there were no keys for any of the bedrooms (yet the locks are there) and we would not be getting any. To my horror, the key in the downstairs bedroom didn't work. Nothing was said when we were viewing the house about there being no keys for the bedrooms. Once again though, I'm not sure where we stand legally as technically we never asked about bedroom keys when we viewed.

Last one...
4: There is a lot of extra appliances about the house that are not needed (eg. we have 2 toasters, 3 irons, some wierd lamp thing that doesn't work etc). We asked could they be taken away as they just take up space but were told no. We can't dump them either because the agency has an itinerary of everything in the house and we will be charged for anything missing.

Thanks for any advice you can give on the above points. It would be much appreciated.

Regards,
Bacchus

antoinolachtnai

1 and 2. They should fix the broken stuff.

3. Nope, no chance, you're not entitled to bedroom keys per se. If you really want this, offer to split the cost of fitting locks.

4. You can't make them take that stuff in general, but I would get them to take the broken stuff. Failing that, it should be marked 'broken' on the inventory.

Victor

You can change a bedroom lock for about 10 each + fitting, but you need the landlord's permission.

On the other points, tell them in writing that if they do not act within say 10 days, that you are disposing of the damaged **and dangerous** fittings and will be deducting the cost of disposal and replacements from the next rent.

antoinolachtnai

Deductions from rent? Don't do that. You'd be better to just leave. You are not entitled to do this and you will create bad feelings.

Victor

Erm, its a mostly idle threat.

antoinolachtnai

Idle threats? I wouldn't go around making threats I'm not comfortable about actually carrying it through. But maybe that's just my style!

blue banana

Can you put the extra appliances in the attic, in the meantime?

eth0_

Ah this sounds like my situation. The fridge freezer in my flat is damaged (the door of the freezer is damaged beyond repair, letting icey air into the fridge, thus causing the food in the fridge to crystallise, and one of the mirrored sliding wardrobe doors is cracked.

The fridge i'm more annoyed about as it means I can't do a proper shop once a week, it's an absolute pain in the a$$.

I've run the letting agent repeatedly only to be fobbed off with "Ah yeah i'll ring the landlady now and get back to you in 10 mins", never to hear from him again, girls in the office tell me he's "gone out" when it's clear he's not (keeping me on hold for minutes to come back and tell me this...when the receptionist sits 1 metre from his desk!).

I finally send a recorded delivery letter of complaint to the manager of the letting agency, which he signed for. That was 3 weeks ago. I moved in here 3 months ago. I alerted them to the problem a few days after moving in.

Don't know wtf else I can do...they're making me feel like i'm wasting their time, but i'm paying a lot for my own apartment and it's not up to scratch!

Bacchus

Thanks for the repies. I was in contact with Threshold aswell and they advised us (like Victor did) to put our requests in writing and allow a "reasonable" number of days for the agency to complete them. We've also taken photos of the damaged items in the house that I'll develop and bring in tomorrow.

That's kind of what I expected as far as the bedroom keys go but I just needed to hear someone else confirm it.
The random stuff in the house we could try and get up to the attic (access is high up and we've no step ladder so it'll be tricky).

I'm not sure about carrying out the the work ourselves and deducting costs from the rent. I'll have to check that out. If after 10 days they haven't completed the requests there are probably other ways to go about the situation.

That sucks eth0_. So pissed off that letting agents can get away with this kind of stuff. I was expecting a much more professional attidude from them. The 4th guy moved into the house last night too and found that his bedroom window won't close properly either. Going to be fun getting the agency to fix that

Thanks again,
Bacchus

antoinolachtnai

eth0: sounds like it's time to write to the PRTB.