Where to lodge formal complaint against landlord??

Pixie4

Hi all!

Just looking for some advice from people in the know regarding lodging a formal complaint against a landlord. To make a very long story short, my sister and I were renting an apartment on a fixed term lease for one year. We never gave the landlord any trouble and always paid our rent on time if not early!!

Anyways, I rang the landlord two weeks before our lease was up to ask him what day suited him to view the apartment and return our deposit. He actually started shouting at me on the phone saying that we were under a legal obligation to give him 4 weeks notice and then asked "Have you even paid your rent for this month"? Stunned as I was I said the rent was paid, he gave me a date to meet at the apartment, but gave no time, and then hung up on me.

The day before we were due to meet him I texted the landlord and asked him what time suited him to meet us. I did ask him to please condider the fact that we were driving up from Tralee and back down again that same evening in the hope that he would meet us in the early afternoon. He texted back "7pm" and nothing else.

My sister and I were sitting outside the apartment at ten to seven that evening. Our mother (who is in her late 60's) was with us too as she didn't like the idea of us driving up and down in the same day. The landlord arrived at 7.20, ignored us as he walked past and opened the door to the apartment. He then turned to my mother and asked her "Who are you? Surely you should have the common courtesy to introduce yourself"? Of course my mum didn't know where to look but stuttered "I am their mother" but then added "but you didn't introduce yourself either". He told her to wait outside in the hall as he wasn't letting her into "his" property. My sister stated the fact that my mother has seriously high blood pressure (which she does) and should not be standing for long periods. His reply "Well she shouldn't be here so".

What followed was 40 minutes of verbal abuse. He checked the apartment and it was perfect so he couldn't fault us on that but then turned around and said that he was rightly p****d off with us because we didn't give him ample notice. We made our case that it was a fixed lease but he didn't care. He held the power of OUR deposit against us while he verbally abused us, saying we showed no courtesy amongst other things!! Anyways, after asking us how much of our deposit we thought we were entitled to he eventually gave us a cheque. Can I also add that we never had a rent book or received any receipt of all our rent payments.

Sorry about the long story but I want to know who I can officially lodge a complaint with? No person should be allowed to verbally abuse anybody like that when we were legally in the right.

Thanks for reading!

SimpleSam06

The only thing he did wrong was to infringe on your right to quiet and peaceful enjoyment of your home, as far as I can see, since it could be construed that you did invite him up for a chat, so he did enter with your permission.

You can contact the PRTB and Threshold to figure out what recourse you might have, the PRTB seems to be the most effective in cases of illegal eviction, and they are slow.

However, since he felt the need to come across as such a tit, I'd grass him up to the Revenue, who have started cracking down on landlords not paying taxes, I can tell you from personal experience that this works. You won't gain anything from it other than the satisfaction of seeing the sneer put on the other side of his head, though.

Victor

Even with such a lease, you are require d to give about 28 days notice.

The only complaint you can lodge is with the politeness police.

dsg

Hi Pixie, sorry to hear about all the verbal abuse you got. Unfortunately sometimes you just come up against rude people like this. Maybe he was expecting you to renew your lease and was in a panic about covering his rent. Even that wouldn't excuse his rudeness though. i would suggest reporting him to the private residential tenancies board but that will probably only put him on their radar for the next rental.

SimpleSam06

Victor wrote: »

Even with such a lease, you are require d to give about 28 days notice.

Interestingly from the Threshold Website...

What happens if there is a fixed term lease in place?
A tenant cannot avail of the notice periods where they are bound by a fixed term lease which they signed.

Presumably the opposite is also true, as regards landlords?

Pixie4

Thanks to all for taking the time to post back.

SimpleSam, I noted the point regarding the fixed lease on the Threshold website too and as regards the PRTB,when I looked at the website,it appeared that they deal more in current problems with landlords and tenants but don't quote me on it. We just want to have our say against the abuse we endured. The thing is too, he kept goaded us that night in an attempt to get us to bite back so he wouldn't have to give us back our deposit!

dsg-I know for a fact that he wasn't bothered about covering his rent as he owns 4 other apartments in the complex and we were paying 700 yo yo's each a month so I don't think money was his problem!

Once again, thanks....short of leaving a fish behind the washing machine to rot, I'll have to hope that karma really does exist!!!

The_Conductor

Regardless of the existence of the fixed term lease- continuous occupation of the property for a period exceeding 6 months brought a Part 4 tenancy into being under the 2004 Residential Tenancies Act- which along with affording the tenant rights which they may not have had in their original lease, also imposes obligations on them- among which under Section 6 of the Act, are specified periods of notice which must be served by either the tenant or the landlord.

Table 2, on page 50 of the act (attached here), specifies the notice periods for tenants. For over 6 months, but less than 1 year- a tenant must give 35 days notice of intention to terminate a tenancy.

S.