Letting Agents not giving back deposit and ex flat mate gets away with it all

[London Girl]

I moved in a year ago with a flat mate. Until recently i discovered that she was stealing from me so i left the flat instantly.

I told my letting agents immediately that i was moving out. We had signed a tenancy agreement when we had originally moved in but then it ran out and was never renewed. (i have been told after the contract has run out it will then run on a monthly basis)

I have a six hundred pound deposit on the flat and now the letting agents are saying i get none of it back. My rent ran form 1st every month and i moved out on the 18th but i has already paid until the 1st of the next month. So i would presume that they just have the right to take eighteen days off it.

However me and my flatmate had to both sign a tenancy agreement but pay for our own halfs of rent deposit and have a guarantor each. My flat mate owed the estate agent £200 on her bond and never paid her it so i presume they have taken that off my deposit can they do that??

Also there is over £1000 in bills outstanding that i was unaware that were there. My flat mate was ensuring me on a monthly basis that the bills were being paid and i was giving her £150 per month but she hasnt paid any of them. I asked the council tax and electricity company if they could split the bill (even though i have already paid my half) and they refused they said even if i paid off half of the remaining bill and she didnt pay the other half i would also be legally responsible. She has now disapeared and i have no forwarding address for her so i cant even take her to a small claims court as i dont know where she is.

[Nightmare4banks]

London Girl,in reply to your post:

Please answer the following questions:

1.Did you sign one tenancy agreement or two seperate tenancy agreements?

2.Do you have any proof of paying this ex-flat mate the £150 each and every month?

3.Do you know where this ex-flatmate worked?

The answers to the above questions should hopefully enable me to assist you further.

a.Regading the Council Tax You must make sure to pay this debt otherwise you could end up in jail if you don't pay!

b.I have a suggestion if you have not already tried this - ask the letting agent if he/she can give you her forwarding address(they may or may not giveit/have it) - don't talk about the deposit now(just say you accept the fact that they can keep the deposit and you are not bothered about this now - by the way we will discuss this after you answer my questions - listed above) and tell the agent that you need to contact her urgently.A bit sneaky but why not?At the end of the day this ex-flat mate of yours was a crook!

Anyway,I look forward to getting the answers to my questions and helping you further to sort out your problem.

[London Girl]

I think it was just one tenancy agreement.

No I haven't got any proof of paying her this money she only ever wanted it in cash (surprise surprise) although any bills that were paid for i have paid from my card as initially i was paying the bills off. Then she decided to take that 'responsibility' off me and she would pay off the bills if i gave her the money.

And no i dont know where she is working as she was only tempin at the time.

The letting agent doesn't have a forwarding address as she just disapeared but her partner was a guarantor for both of us so they have his address (she wouldn't give it to me) and the letting agent will give the electricity providers and council his address as a forwarding address

[London Girl]

Oh my god i can't believe the cheek of my estate agents. Not only are they saying they are not going to give me back my deposit they are trying to charge me an extra £230 on top of it. They have charged £130 for cleaning (a two bedroom flat that wasn't even unclean) £100 for redecorating the place was new and we certainly didnt damage it £80 for a picture that went missing (two guesses for who stole that) and the best one is when i moved out my flat mate requested that they changed the locks (said she was scared) so that i had no access to the flat even though i was paying rent for it and they have the cheek to charge me fifty pounds for the lock change.

[London Girl]

Oh and one months rent even though they had stopped me from having access to the flat

[Nightmare4banks]

London Girl,in reply to your posts:

Please answer the following questions:

1.Did you give the agent one month notice when you vacated the property or not?

2.Prior to vacating the property,did you check the final bill readings(as far as you were concerned) or not?

3.When the agent changed the locks:

a.On what day did the agent change the locks in the last month of the tenancy?

b.Did you request that the agent give you set of keys after the the locks were changed or not?

4.Are you on speaking terms with this ex-flatmate's partner now or not?

The answers to the above questions should hopefully enable me to assist you further.


I will give you my views regarding the deposit deductions and other issues that you mentioned after you have answered the above questions.

[London Girl]

No i didn't give them one months notice. On the 17th May i discovered that she had been tryin to commit fraud in my name and stealing from me so i left the apartment and got the police involved. (I had paid until the 30th May) she was still living in the apartment.

I told the letting agents the next day the situation (my next payment was due on the 1st June and i cancelled my direct debit) they asked me for my keys back straight away (18th May), i said i would drop them in a week before the 1st of June but they said this was not soon enough as my flat mate had told them she feared that i would come back and they changed the locks straight away so that i had no access to the flat.

So no i didnt give them a months notice as it was only twelve days before the end of the month that i vacated the property. But they have taken a months rent out of the deposit to cover June 1st to July 1st and i didn't have access to the flat from 18th May.

I didn't request that they gave me the set of keys after that as we both already had key and they told me they were changing the keys so that i didnt have access to the flat on my flat mates request.

I also warned the estate agents that things may go missing from the flat and now a picture has been taken and they are trying to charge me for this as well.

Once i left the property i phoned our concierge for the final meter readings, phoned up our electricity company, council tax etc to give them the final metre readings and to pay half of my last months bill, only to discover that all the months before that they hadnt been paid (and she had told me she was clearing them every month and would tell me how much i owed her and i would give her it)

No i am not on speaking terms with her partner, I have attempted by letter (recorded delivery) to make contact with her (when she was still living at the flat) to sort these bills out but i got an email in reply saying "never contact me again" and i have no forwarding address for her now that she has moved out or her partner although the letting agent does have an address for her partner who was both of our guarantor

[Nightmare4banks]

London Girl in reply to your posts and in my view:

1.You could try to sue this ex-flatmate(so much for being a mate!I can think of better words for her!) by getting a summons sent to him.It seems that he is taking her side and so he could be in cahoots with her regarding the fraud that had been committed against you.You would do this by getting a court order against the agent to give the judge and not you her partner's details.

2.Personally,I think it would be fairly difficult to prove the fact that you gave her any money - however,if you succeeded in getting the case heard in court and she or her partner lied in court they could go to prison for contempt of court.If there was a proof that your money was passed onto her either by giving her cheques or credited in the form of cash and or cheques you would have had a much easier case against her.

3.Regarding the estate agent:

a.You should sue the agent for the return of the deposit.(If there is no reply to your pre-action letter-template can be found within the library on this site and I personally allow up to 1 month for a reply).You should not have a problem here in winning - good news for a change!

b.Allways send any letters by Recorded Delivery and retain the stubs should you need to show them to the judge if the case reaches a hearing.

4.In order to possibly help you further I would need a rundown regarding the fraud/stealing and the police's reaction in dealing with it.This may help to put more "meat on the bones" in order to sway things in your favour at a higher level.

I have a few more questions for you:

1.Have you retained a copy of the last e-mail she sent you?Or any previous e-mails if available/applicable?

2.What were her reasons(if any and apart from you catching her out of course!) for requesting that you cease contact with her?

3.As far as you are aware,did the estate agent know the ex-flat mate and/or her partner well before you signed the tenancy agreement or not?

4.Were there any more of your belongings left in the property after the locks were changed?If yes did you manage to get them out of the property without a fuss?If no,what actually happened?

5.Before leaving the property,did you take any photos of the state of the property?

6.Did you a co-sign with the ex-flatmate an inventory of the contents/fittings/furnishings regarding the property on signing the tenancy agreement or not?

The answers to the above questions should hopefully enable me to assist you further with your cases and the best way(s) forward or the options that may be available for you to persue to get the best result possible and hopefully in the quickest time.

[London Girl]

1. Yes i have the copy of the email she sent to me saying do not contact me again. The letter i sent her was by recorded delivery and it was basically telling her to pay the bills that she owed or i would take legal action against her but i fogot to put my forwarding address on the letter so i sent her an email saying further to my correspondance i sent you here is my address for correspondance and that was her reply i have all of this still on email.

2. No there would have been no reason for me not to contact her other than the the fact that i caught her out and got the polivce involved (as she does already have a criminal record i found out not long before this happened)

3. No the estate agent didn't know her before. The manager who is the one trying to take the deposit and charge more was the person that we have always dealt with. She was away on holiday when this all happened and it was another member of staff that was working there that got the locks changed so that i couldnt have access etc after my flat mate had been down to see her. I asked straight away what would happen with the deposit and place etc and she said i would have to wait until the manager got back two weeks later. So had the manager been there i dont know if she would have changed the locks so i couldn't have access which i think will be the strongest point in my case of getting this deposit back.

4. There was no more belongings that i needed that were left in the flat so after the locks were changed, the estate agent did ask me if i had any belongings that i would need to get before she changed the locks

5. No i didn't take any pictures of the flat before i left the minute i found out what she had done i packed up my stuff instantly and moved out. And the letting agents are basing it all on when she left the flat i dont know what it looked like when she left as it was a month and a half later

6. I think we did sign something or definitely had a list of the fixtures and fittings but once again what was missing from the property when she left i wouldn't know as it was a month and a half later and i didn't have access to that.

About the fraud i had lost my post key (or should i say it went missing) about three months before i vacated the property. On it was the key to my front door, the fob to get into the block of flats and the post key to access our post boxes. She kindly offered to get my keys recut but only got the door keys done and not the one for the post box. So on a daily basis she would get the post from the post box and hand it to me.
I had noticed some post going missing but didnt think too much of it. Then one day i was expecting some money in the post so when i passed our letter box there was a catalogue wedged in the post box with the letter on top enough for me to fit my hand in there and pull out the post and i found a letter from barclaycard thanking me for my application and returning my bank statement, payslip and utility bill (i had never applied for this) the payslip and utility bill i had never seen and the bank statement must have been taken from my room so i looked through her draws and found more of my bank statements in there and post coming to this address with lots of different names of people that didn't live their. I told the police and they were looking into it but because it got rejected and was an internet application and she hasn't signed there wasn't enough proof that it was her to do anything about it (even though she was the only person that had access to that post box) so that i needed to just keep checking my credit file and let them know if anything else came up. I have crime reference numbers. Then the penny dropped as there had been a many occassions where money has gone missing im just a very unorganised person that really doesnt take much notice so just presumed i must have spent it(Just to top it off i had also lent her £1500 which im obviously never going to see back)

I know that i can't prove that i gave her money for the bills but does it make any difference that the only bills that had been paid were paid from my card?

Also again if i have to pay half of the bills then fine i will have to do that but i have already asked the council tax and utility companies and they said that even if i paid half of the bills and she didnt pay the other half then we would both still be legally responsible. There is no way I'm going to pay the full amount of the bills which is over £1000 so i dont know what to do with this do i wait for it to go to court? Or is this where i need to issue the summons and what do i tell these companies in the meantime as they are no help whatsoever

[London Girl]

Also even if i got a summons sent to him (i think she has moved in with him now anyway) i know for a fact that she will just put return to sender on it and i think it is highly unlikely that she would not turn up to court what would happen then?

[London Girl]

I went to the my areas version of CAB yesterday.

The solicitor i saw didn't have enough knowledge to comment on situation with the letting agent he thought i have a 50/50 chance so has referred me to a housing solicitor on thursday.

In regard to the bills though he said that they could persue who ever they wanted out of the two of us (and it would probably be me as they have my forwarding address) but he also said that not its not much money really to the companies so they probably wont persue it or can't do a great deal about it since i am not living there anymore (ie cut off the electricity supply), and suggested with the council tax that i write to them and pay them half of the bill and then suggest that they persue her for the rest but he didnt think i have a case at all against her as i dont really have any proof against her.

So i dont know whether to just sue the letting agents and not pay the bills. I dont know what the consequences would be if i didnt pay the bills. Ive already offered to pay half and they just say we are both legally liable.

[Nightmare4banks]

London Girl in reply to your posts and in my view:

1.You should persue the letting agent regarding the deposit.Template letters can be found in the library.

2.As I told you before you do not have any proof that you gave her the money i.e.cheque or account to account transfer or witness to giving her the cash which would make your case much stronger.

3.Regarding the council tax,if you do not pay you know you could end up with bailiffs on your doorstep and possible prison.Also,wherever you may go the council would persue you.However,if I were in your position I would see to pay 50% of the total amount owed to the council and let the council take me to court.

Any non-payment of council tax bills are heard in the magistrates court so you should put forward the fact that your ex-flatmate stole from you and you have a complaint filed with the police(take all the paperwork with you).It will then be up to the magistrate to decide what to do.Personally,I feel that you will not have to pay anymore as long as you have paid the 50% amount.This is because the magistrate has the duty to treat you fairly and thus the council should try harder to find your ex-flatmate rather than burden you unfairly with the full council tax amount owed.Also,this is because the council is a form of govermental office and the Human Rights laws apply which is to your advantage.

4.Regarding the bills,personally I would not worry about them now.As you have stated,you are not going to live there anymore and again if anything did happen you should go to court and only pay 50% of the bills up until the day you vacated and not any more.Again if this matter went to court,a county court judge would be the person to decide what you owe.However,this may be slightly different from a council tax debt because you do not owe the money to the council but private utility companies and you both agreed to take on the bills together so legally you are both liable.

I hope this helps.

If you any questions,just ask.

I have one more question for you:

Do you have any proof that you lent her the £1500?If yes,please elaborate further.

The answer to this question should hopefully enable me to assist you further with your problem.

[London Girl]

Thank you by the way Nightmare4banks you have been a great help

No i still wouldn't have proof of the money i lent her i withdrew 1250 over the space of a few days out of the account and then the other 500 was to pay off the last electricity bill which i just paid from my card. (half of which i owed anyway)

She had clearly befriended me and planned it all to screw me over and the chances of me getting a penny back from her are going to be very unlikely i think. I'm just lucky i caught her first attempt at fraud because i think even how bad the situation is now it could have been so much worse!!!

I went to see a housing lawyer (a free one - law for all) today and she was looking at the case with the letting agents and she thought it was unlikely that i would get my deposit back because
. I didn't give one months notice
. Because i need to prove that the flat wasn't in that state or didnt need decorating etc when i left

. So i explained though i don't know what state the flat was left in because they locked me out
. and surely if i have to pay one months rent for that flat then i should have had access to it like she did

but she wasn't 100% sure so wanted to speak to her supervisor and come back to me.

I'll wait and see what her supervisor comes back with but i feel i have a case and really want to take it to court but form what i had told her she said that it cost £150 to go to court and if i lose ill prob have to pay the extra £230 they are trying to charge me for as well.

Nightmare4banks do you work in the legal field or do you know anywhere else i can get a second opinion from hers on this. Law for All are the same as the cab in my area i think.

I know that noone will know what will happen in the court because its up to the judge but i really thought i did have a case today and even though the solicitor wasn't sure and needed to speak to her boss its made me a bit weary because she didnt think my case was strong

[Nightmare4banks]

London Girl,

Sorry I have been very busy.

I totally disagree with the solicitor regarding the notice because there were justified reasons in you vacating the property i.e. the stealing.

So,in brief I would give it a shot at suing the agent.

Yes,I know I am very helpful(lol!).

In reply to your question,I do not work in the law field but I am very experienced in residential lettings and arranging mortgages for landlords.


In my view the inventory is critical here.However if you do not have a copy of it you should be able to get a copy from the agent via the court.

[un1boy]

Oh London Girl, I am very sorry to hear about the way you have been treated.

Are you confident that nothing can be done with her partner? Because, as guarantor, he would of had to sign a contract making him legally responsible of rent/bills weren't paid?

I would just tell all the companies to forward the bills to your letting agent. Write to the agent and tell them that they have a duty of care to you in that they must forward the bills to the guarantor and leave it at that.

Then, sue the f*****s to get your deposit back - are they a small, independant outfit? If so, it would be cheaper for them to pay you the deposit back anyway than taking you to court.

Have you written any letters to them threatening court action? It woudl be interesting to learn their reaction.