Hi, I'm hoping that someone will be able to give me a bit of advice regarding some problems my parents are having with the housing association that they rent from. They moved into a new build apartment roughly 4 years ago, with the flat including all new mod-cons including a new oven. The tenancy agreement they signed clearly states that the housing association is responsible for maintaining all applicances, but 4 months after they moved in, they received a letter through the post which stated that once the warranty on the applicances runs out, the tenant is responsible for rectifying any faults. The warranty on the oven has now lapsed and it has broken, and my parents have been told that they must pay for an engineer. My parents are on a very low-income, which is why they are living in social housing, and simply can not afford to pay for this to be fixed. I've done some research and I'm pretty sure that legally, the housing association is responsible for fixing the fault, rather than my parents, regardless of the letter sent after the tenancy was signed. Does anyone have any idea if this is correct, and how I could go about challenging this? Thanks in advance for any help. Wheelbarrow

Hi, Just wanted some advice if anyone can give us any. We signed a AST in May for 12 months through a letting agent, on behalf of a housing association. I have just received a job offer for a new job in Glasgow which means that me and my partner will both have to relocate. There is no way I could turn this down as there is a very good chance i am about to be made redundant in my current job, along with many of my other colleagues. The landlord has said that they will let us out of the contract but we have to pay a £500 relisting fee so that the letting agent can find us a new tennant. We will also have to pay rent until the new tennants in. Obviously we are happy to pay the rent until the new tennant moves in but the relisting fee sounds very harsh. I have checked the contract and it does not say anything about being allowed to ltave early, so therefore there is no mention of this fee. Is it still enforceable? Thanks

I agree with Kraken in as much as I think £200 is more than reas onable considering the situation. Fos do not tend to award over this amount unless there was severe distress and inconvenience over a prolonged amount of time. Obviously if you can prove financial loss this would be different but I do not see that this is the case here. Close to £200 and a bunch of flowers seems very generous to me and perhaps your relatives should be reasonable and accept what has been offered rather than attempting to drag this out in the hope of a high payout. I get the impression that you think the compensation should be much higher but the mistake is just not big enough. I worked for some time as a complaint handler for another high street bank and I would be very suprised if Fos increased on the amount already offered. I would advise you take what is being offered.

Hi, I have recently (one month) moved out of a property after living in in for 9 months. As we are yet to receive a cheque for the deposit, I have contacted our landlord who said that as he never received our forwarding address, hw did not know where to send the cheque. We did leave our details in the kitchen of the property, so just put this down to him being slow. We are yet to recieve the cheque, so I have looked into the matter. I had no idea (naive i know) about the tenancy deposit schemes, so i did not know that we should have received notification from our landlord within 14 days. I have today contacted all three deposit schemes who have all confirmed that they do not have a deposit for our address, which suggests that our deposit was never protected. I have also contacted the letting agent who let the property and they have confirmed that they sent the money to the landlord soon after we signed, and that it was his responsibility to register the amount. They gave me a reference number which is apparently his account details for one of the schemes. Just wanting some advice on what we can do. I've read we could take court action to force him to pay back the deposit plus compensation and I would really like to do this. He was a shockingly bad landlord so this really is the last straw! Should I ask him for proof that he secured the deposit or will this jepordise any court action?

Hi, I am in the process of trying to clear a lot of debt and I recently sent around 14 £1.00 cheques to various creditors along with a letter to say I could only afford to pay £1 a month. This took me around 7 hours to sort out with the various letters and envelopes to sort out. I've checked my bank this morning and was suprised to see a cheque for £100 had cleared out of my account, along with all the £1 cheques. I visited my local branch only for them to show me a photo of the cheque on their system. In the box in the cheque where you write the amount, it looks as if I have written £100 rather than £1.00. Either I forgot to put a dot (unlikely) or it is just very faint. However, I did write one pound only on amount payable line and the letter clearly states that I only wanted to pay a pound. The bank are saying it is my fault as it looks like £100 and the creditor is refusing to give it back as I owe them more than that. It has left me with no money for the next week and I'm not sure exactly who I should be chasing for this. Does anyone know what I can do? Surely if I wrote one pound only, thats got to count for something. Any advice will be welcomed