I hope someone can help because my flatmate and I are ready to tear our hair out. Basically I moved into a one bed flat at the end of August 2009 with a deposit of £300 which I paid and signed the contract and heard nothing more. Note that my landlord is English but he lives in Dubai. His son did live in the flat next door but he moved out to Dubai as well. After 4 months my friend was looking for a place to live and the 2 bed flat my landlord's son had lived in was free so he agreed to let us move in there at the start of December 2009. A new AST was signed and the deposits were £200 each. He kept my original £300 and said my flat mate could pay him £100.00. We carried out the inventory ourselves as there was no agent, and the landlord was obviously not about! The flat was disgusting and my flatmate is a fanatic cleaner, so she set to and cleaned the entire place and then wrote an email to the landlord complaining. He followed this us by saying he would pay her £100.00 for the cleaning. He got an agent for the place by around end of April 2009 to start of May 2009. We have since moved out of the flat at the end of May 2009. Before we moved out we tried to arrange a date to do the inventory with the agent but they said they would only do this during weekdays between 9am and 5.30pm. We both work 9am-6pm which our landlord knew as well as the agent. Conveniently the agent had been happy to come to the flat at 6.3pm previously to take photos to advertise the flat and on a Saturday to do an EPC!! Therefore the inventory was carried out the week after we left, without us. We are since being charged for cleaning of the flat, although this is for dust! They are trying to charge us around £30 to clean this. Note that we cleaned the flat before we left and dust takes less than a day to gather. We have agreed to pay for the oven to be cleaned and for a new freezer draw as we cracked one, although it is purely cosmetic damage. We offer £75.00 to bring this to an end. ( £40.00 for oven cleaning and £35.00 for drawer, after finding a quote online). Our landlord has rejected this and wanted to take around £153.00 off our deposit, and then includes the dusting! We sent photos we took the day we left the flat but yet our landlord says all it shows is that we left the place tidy. It may sound petty, but we don't see why we should have money taken from us when we have already carried out the task. Note that he also wants to charge us £26 for a new lamp which we apparently dented - yet it still works!! We have since been told about the TDS, which we knew nothing about and the landlord gave us no info about. We never recieved anything saying it was in a scheme and the contract says nothing except , "the landlord will get the interest on the bond". Please can someone help us and give us advice of how to proceed. We are willing to take this the whole way but we need to know if we have a leg to stand on. SORRY FOR THE ESSAY - I RANT WHEN ANNOYED!! LOL thanks in advance for any help. Nicki

i would but i don't know how to!

My problem partly relates to this. So I hope someone can help because my flatmate and I are ready to tear our hair out. Basically I moved into a one bed flat at the end of August 2009 with a deposit of £300 which I paid and signed the contract and heard nothing more. Note that my landlord is English but he lives in Dubai. His son did live in the flat next door but he moved out to Dubai as well. After 4 months my friend was looking for a place to live and the 2 bed flat my landlord's son had lived in was free so he agreed to let us move in there at the start of December 2009. A new AST was signed and the deposits were £200 each. He kept my original £300 and said my flat mate could pay him £100.00. We carried out the inventory ourselves as there was no agent, and the landlord was obviously not about! The flat was disgusting and my flatmate is a fanatic cleaner, so she set to and cleaned the entire place and then wrote an email to the landlord complaining. He followed this us by saying he would pay her £100.00 for the cleaning. He got an agent for the place by around end of April 2009 to start of May 2009. We have since moved out of the flat at the end of May 2009. Before we moved out we tried to arrange a date to do the inventory with the agent but they said they would only do this during weekdays between 9am and 5.30pm. We both work 9am-6pm which our landlord knew as well as the agent. Conveniently the agent had been happy to come to the flat at 6.3pm previously to take photos to advertise the flat and on a Saturday to do an EPC!! Therefore the inventory was carried out the week after we left, without us. We are since being charged for cleaning of the flat, although this is for dust! They are trying to charge us around £30 to clean this. Note that we cleaned the flat before we left and dust takes less than a day to gather. We have agreed to pay for the oven to be cleaned and for a new freezer draw as we cracked one, although it is purely cosmetic damage. We offer £75.00 to bring this to an end. ( £40.00 for oven cleaning and £35.00 for drawer, after finding a quote online). Our landlord has rejected this and wanted to take around £153.00 off our deposit, and then includes the dusting! We sent photos we took the day we left the flat but yet our landlord says all it shows is that we left the place tidy. It may sound petty, but we don't see why we should have money taken from us when we have already carried out the task. Note that he also wants to charge us £26 for a new lamp which we apparently dented - yet it still works!! We have since been told about the TDS, which we knew nothing about and the landlord gave us no info about. We never recieved anything saying it was in a scheme and the contract says nothing except , "the landlord will get the interest on the bond". Please can someone help us and give us advice of how to proceed. We are willing to take this the whole way but we need to know if we have a leg to stand on. SORRY FOR THE ESSAY - I RANT WHEN ANNOYED!! LOL thanks in advance for any help. Nicki