I started renting a property in London in June 2009 and left it in June 2010 in immaculate condition. The landlord was an absolute nightmare during our tenancy (letting himself into our appartment without notification, refusing to get anything fixed unless threathened by legal action) and at the end of our tenancy in June 2010 he claimed 85% of our deposit to re-paint the whole appartment and change the bathtub (for a 1cm chip that was there when we moved in but not marked on the flawed inventory that we refused to sign from the start) amongst other ridiculous claims. Our deposit is sitting with the deposit protection scheme so as soon as we received the claim from our landlord and it became obvious it was non-negotiable, we took it up with the TDS. The landlord dragged it for as long as he could before refusing the dispute and saying he would make a case with the small claims court against us. He has indeed done so 4 months ago but we are now told by the court that he has failed to send his questionnaire through, meaning we are still without a court date. This landlord has a history of doing this, it is obviously not for personal gain (since he does not hold the money) but for the sheer pleasure of maniuplation. Can I make a counter claim with the small claim court or send it back to the TDS? Can I sue him for interest on this? If so, what interest rate would apply? Is there anything I can do to prevent other tenants to suffer from this in the future? There are a couple of his previous tenants who would be willing to join forces to prevent him from ever being able to be a landlord again... Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hello All! I sent a letter of complaint to Halifax customer relations in August of this year. The complaint related to many areas where I felt we had been very badly treated as customers. Included was the mis-selling of ppi insurance on our personal loan. The main complaint with the ppi was not the fact it was mis-sold to us and we were not elegible to claim, but just 9 days after we agreed I tried to cancel but couldn't. We were told the only way of removing the insurance was to entirely replace the loan with a new loan. However the rate quoted for the new loan was more than twice the rate of the first loan! So in short, this was not cost effective and we were basically forced to keep the insurance! Anyway a couple of weeks after sending our letter of complaint we received a response from Halifax customer relations. The letter basically stated that they had investigated the complaint, and offered to return us to the position we would have been in had we not been mis-sold ppi on our loan (+8%). It went on to say that it had been passed to their redress team to calculate the amounts payable to us, and they would contact us within 5 working days to confirm these calculations. This however did not happen. We called almost daily for four weeks after the five day period originally promised by them. To begin with we were told that they had a back log but we should be fully redressed in the next few days. Then we were told that they did not have a system to calculate how much we were owed...and they were currently working on a system to do it. Apparantly it was a very complex calculation...because we did later replace the loan...so we paid too much interest on loan 2 also. (I was able to calculate the compensation payable myself in about 15 mins?? So why can't they?) So we continued to chase Halifax daily, until the beginning of October! We were then told that they were sorry but they were no longer processing my complaint!! (Due to the judicial review) Apparantly they were holding all cases that may be affected by the results of this review! even though they had fully investigated my complaint and were in the process of redress!! I do not believe that they could not calculate my compensation in 6 weeks...think they were stalling for this judicial review! The same day they told me this I submitted a claim through the small claims courts. They have 14 days to respond initially and if they don't I can file judgement and win by default. Unfortunately they filed yesterday an acknowledgement of service with only hours of the 14 days left to spare. This gives them another 14 days I believe to build a defence? Or deal with the claim? The copy of the response arrived in the post today....titled acknowledgment of service...ticked I intend to defend all of this claim...and signed by a litigation lawyer. Do you think I will be ok here? They did write to me confirming that they would pay out. (will this stand up alone in court?) Will it go that far you think? Any comments, help appreciated. I will keep you posted as things progress. Apologies for any bad spelling / grammer...I'm tired... hope it reads ok.

Hi Have trawled through the threads but finding a situation like mine is proving hard. I'll be as brief as I can - any advice much appreciated. Moved into rented property with housemate in May 2007. Agency showed us around and took our deposit but LL has handled everything else (all communications etc). Deposit was put straight into a TDS. 6 months later it was not protected by the scheme anymore and remained unprotected in any scheme for remainder of our tenancy. Problems occured during tenancy regarding upkeep of property (leaking roofs, doors, faulty kitchen white goods etc) which LL either took a long time to solve or did not solve at all. Several letters were exchanged - LL accused us of not keeping property up to scratch, we responded strongly stating our viewpoint which is that we were not in the wrong. Upon exit from property (Jan 2010), we had property professionally cleaned, a carpet replaced and an arrangement with the council to remove large amount of rubbish and old carpet from outside property. LL wrote to us enclosing a cheque for our deposit having deducted approx £220 (on total deposit of approx £1100) claiming house was not cleaned, rubbish was not collected and several other things all of which were unfair/untrue. We have receipts for cleaning, reference number from the council for rubbish collection and recorded delivery receipts for all letters we have ever sent to her some of which she responded to, some which she did not - many issues she did not resolve. With no TDS to intervene, we wrote stating we disputed LL's claims and wanted our full deposit back. We did not hear back. Approx 5 months later (having done some research), we wrote again stating that as we had not heard back, we would pursue the matter in the small claims court. LL wrote back re-iterating reasons for taking money off the deposit and adding new issues with the state of the house when we left (mainly petty) but also included some utter lies about things we had said or done and also included photos - some of which showed contents of the rubbish bags we'd left outside, emptied inside the house(!!!!). LL claimed to be disappointed that we had threatened the small claims court and threatened to "counter sue" us for loss of earnings because we had not allowed the agent to show people around in the last 2 months of tenancy (simply not true!) and the state of the house when we left. Issued the claim via moneyclaim and then housemate (not me - whose name the claim is in) received a phonecall from the *agency* (as opposed to the LL) who offered to pay us the difference so that we could have our full deposit back on the condition we put it in writing that the matter is over. Requested that they put this proposal in writing to us but they refused. Have since heard nothing and now about to pursue the claim with moneyclaim - as the 14 days have elapsed (it's actually about a month now). What I want to know is what chance we have of a)claiming our full deposit back (and the court fee) and b)of claiming the 3x deposit penalty from the LL As far as I was concerned, we have a good case- however, having read this forum and much earlier posts, I am concerned that as I am not living in the property any longer, this could affect things. I would appreciate any advice. Many thanks Blag

Hi this is my first post. last month i bought a car bumper on ebay. the seller said 48 hours shipping but shipped it 2 weeks later. i sent my car and the bumper for fitting to the bodyshop once i got the item. the mechanics called me the next day and told me that the bumper was faulty as it does not fit the car model even though the seller claims on his listing that all products are tested. so i notified the seller stating that the mechanics find the bumper to be faulty and what is the next step... he says i should go fix it my self that he's not responsible. this is someone who trades on ebay and not a private seller. i contacted consumer direct and they said that under sale of goods act 1979 if i find the product to be of not satisfactory quality and unfit for purpose i should be able get my money back and loss and damage as the body shop will charge me for storing my car till i find another bumper. luckily 2 days later i was able to get another bumper and the car is now all done. i went and opened a case with ebay resolution center, and i stated my facts and instead of posting the photos of the faulty item i gave the seller links to the item i posted on flicker thinking then ebay too can see the state of the item. the seller was a total bully was stating that he will get hold of my phone number one way or the other. i just told him payup and collect your faulty item or i'll see you in small claims court. (on ebay i only requested for the original item i paid for, i didn't ask him to pay for the damages or anything) so the seller kept sending me msg's stating that i've got no case so i left him a negative feedback, then he agreed to pay me the money and pick up the item at his own expence if i remove the negative feedback. so he sent me the refund offer through ebay and i accepted it and he sent me an option to revise the feedback and i did. after that he went back and refuse to pay again and said there's nothing i can do about it or will see my money. ebay doesn't seem to be bothered. how do i make a claim through small claims court for the money and the extra charges and the mechanics have already agreed that incase of court action they'll be happy to come and testify to the quality of the bumper that was sold.

Hi - I'm the claimant in a case detailed here - http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?266357-Pursuing-a-judgment-against-an-overseas-landlord-via-a-UK-letting-agent#post3016201 - it's a housing thing but because my latest headache is more about nuts n'bolts small claims procedure than the particulars of the claim I've posted it here, sorry if this is wrong. Anyway: I made a claim against an agent for various disrepair in a flat I rented once, they filed a defence, we applied to amend the claim form to add the landlord as a defendant and attended a direction hearing to get permission from a district judge to do this. The judge set a date for defence which the agent agreed to (themselves and on behalf of the LL who they represent), we filed the amended claim form with the court immediately afterwards and were basically advised to sit back and wait for further developments. After nobody filed a defence, I recently applied for default judgment but received a letter back asking for proof that we'd served the amended claim on the defendant, ie a certificate of service. My understanding based on what the court staff had told me was that because the agent was there and agreed to it, a date of service was specified in the order granted, and we'd paid £40 to amend the claim and hand it in to the court, the court would then serve the amended claim on the defendants along with appropriate pack of forms for defence etc. The court staff I recently spoke to on the phone basically said that we should have served it ourselves though, and that we now needed to do this. I'm a little uneasy about this becacse I've been bad advice by the court staff before that's delayed/complicated my case. I thought that the court serving the forms was kind of the default option because it's reliable and they can send the relevant additional forms from their end. Should I actually re-serve the papers myself, and if so should I be helpfully printing off various copies of the forms they need to fill in to respond to the claim? (This is partially based on me imagining that I've read a thread here where this happened to someone and they just had to write back saying "the court did this" - I can't find it if it exists)