Hi there, I'm having some problems to get the balance of my deposit back, this is £290. I have sent 3 emails to my former landlord and he said that I'm his lodger, I don't have any right and they are not willing to give me anything back. The problem is I'm not his lodger, he didn't live in the property. The landlord is a business of 2 Spanish guys (agency) taking advantage of other foreigners in London. They rent properties through letting agencies and they sublet every inch in the house to people. We were living in London 8 people in a house with one bathroom. As far as I know the owner of the house doesn't know what is happening in her house, but my landlord doesn't want to give me her details nor the letting agency details neither. The agency who rented me the house keeps partly the deposits of other tenants saying that the walls need to be repainted or things like that. My former flatmates had the same problem as me. In my case, they are charging me for a mould which grew in the bedroom due poor insulation, for the cleaning of that mould and for the curtains (which are dirty because of the mould and they were so high I couldn't remove them to wash them up). They are charging me for the walls (were dirty before I moved there, but they didn't do a check-out to the previous tenant and they are charging me for it) and for one night I did not sleep there. This agency are making fraudulent contracts. My contract says "Licence to occupy" and it says "This agreement is not intended to confer exclusive possession upon the licensee, nor it is intended to create the relationship of landlord and tenant between the parties. The Licensee shall not be entitled to an assured tenancy or a statutory periodic tenancy under the Housing Act 1988 or to any other statutory secure of tenure now or upon the determination of the Licence. The Licensee accepts that this Licence does not confer any statutory protection and/or rights that would otherwise be applicable to an assured tenancy or a statutory periodic tenancy under the Housing Act 1988". I contacted Shelter and they said that the agreement is not legal as I was a tenant, not a lodger, as the landlord is an agency and they do not share the property with us. A legal advisor in Shelter told me that I can go to court and make a claim because the agency didn't protect my deposit despite the agreement says. Does anybody know what can I do in this case? This agency does not want to talk to me nor to reply my emails. They took my money unfairly and they are doing the same to other foreigners as people leave the property and they do not know how to claim their money back. So they keep doing the same over and over again. They are taking advantage mainly of Spaniards who come to the UK without knowing how the system works. Is there any way I can report them? If so, where? I don't mind the money, but I want to stop them to do the same to other people. Many thanks.

Hi I was wondering is someone might be able to give me some advice about our landlord's failure to provide us with the prescribed information and them seeking to deduct £100 from our deposit which is held with DPS. I will try to keep this brief. My partner and I rented a property from private landlords. We had an assured shorthold tenancy. 3 weeks before the tenancy was due to expire, they gave us notice to leave at the end of the tenancy as they wanted to sell the property. We pointed out they had to give 2 months notice, they didn't provie a full 2 months and didn't give us proper notice but we let it slip as we didn't want the hassle and just wanted to leave. We left 10 days ago. The landlords mum completed the inventory. She noticed a dent at the bottom of the washing machine. We wrote to the LL after we left to confirm we think the dent has always been there. They said they are going to deduct £100 for the dent and everything else was in order. We disputed this - it is wear and tear and has not affected the working order of the machine. They told us they are seeking to sell the machine and will make a loss. Whilst doing some research, it came to our attention that we've not been provided with the prescribed information relating to our deposit. We wrote to the LL accordingly. They ignored us. We chased, they've come back and said if we agree to them taking £100 they will release the remainder of our deposit. We wrote to them again clearly explaining that failure to provide the prescribed information is failure to comply with the law and we are entitled to seek the return of our deposit in full and 1-3 times compensation. They have now responded saying they have released all but £100 of our deposit and have requested ADR through DPS. My question is - can I send a letter before action and accept ADR at the same time? I am intending to say if they give us the remaining £100 then we will not take further legal action but I don't want to end up in a sitution where I start ADR and can't seek legal redress for their failure to provide the prescribed information. Sorry that was much longer than intended. Any advice would be greatly welcomed!

My landlord/letting agent has said they would like all my my deposit as the house was not sufficiently cleaned. I would like to dispute this. My deposit is registered with the DPS. The problem is reading through the contract, it states that if the letting agent is required to submit information to the ADR, I would be required to pay £100 plus VAT.It also states that if there is no deposit left, I would have to pay for it out of my own money. Is this legal?

Ok, bit of a random one and can't find anywhere else to put it but I'm fuming. Feeling in a bit of a bingo mood, I had a look around online for a site with good sign up offers. I chose bet365 bingo. Now - and I know this is my fault - I'd previously opened a betting account on the bet365 site to place a football bet, then totally forgotten about it. It wasn't a bingo account though. So... opened my bet365 bingo account this afternoon. Got the confirmation email, all fine. then I was directed to a page to make a deposit. I deposited £15 and got a nice bonus. All good so far. Went to play a game and noticed I'd been logged out. Tried to log in, no luck. Tried to retrieve my password, apparently the account no longer exists. I opened the interactive chat app to ask what was happening. Apparently, I should have used my betting account. The new account had been closed as soon as I made a deposit. But here's the problem - I asked about the £15 and bonus, and was told that I would get the £15 back in 7-10 working days (!!!) and no bonus. Not sure where to go from here, but I really don't think this is fair. Pretty sure that if they can take my money instantly, I can get it back as quickly but they won't budge. Also pretty sure they could have flagged up the account issue earlier. Any suggestions?

Want to cancel a New Vehicle Order with Gordon Lamb-Toyota, left a Credit and Debit card deposit totaling £699, signed NVO form on 30/4/11 after sleeping on it we changed our mind. Car order was found in UK to our spec, on the monday thought not to go through with it, but Dealership will not give deposit back supposedly due to expense incurred delivering car to Location, Delivery date 12/05/11. Is the dealership right telling us there's 'no chance' and that we've lost our deposit two days later even though its a Bank Holiday weekend? Please help!!

I started a tenancy in December 2009 and my annual rent equated to £30,000 per annum. At the time of signing my contract in December 2009, the legislation stated that my deposit did not have to be registered to a deposit scheme eg mydeposits.co.uk because the rent is above £25,000. The legislation changed during my tenancy on 1st October 2010 to say that any tenancy with rent below £100,00 per annum had to now be protected. My landlord did not protect my deposit from this date, is this breaking the law? If so then i know i am entitled to my full deposit plus compensation through the courts. The main confusion is that the legislation changed mid tenancy. It has now been 4 weeks since moving out and i am nowhere closer to getting my deposit returned as the estate is holding it. Any help will be much appreciated. I have spoken with mydeposits and the citizen advise bureau. Thanks in advance.

Hi This is my first post so please be gentle. I need to find out who my landlord was in order to claim unprotected deposit and compensation in the County Courts. This is not as simple as it sounds so let me explain. I and two other housemates recently finished a years Assured Shorthold Tenancy on a property however the person I am dealing with is piling up spurious claims that happen to amount to our deposit. We signed the AST in the presence of the man claiming to be our landlord. This is the person we dealt with before and during our tenancy so as far as we were aware he was the landlord. I have his name, address for service and phone number and have already sent him a Letter Before Action which he signed for but never responded to so I know these details are legitimate. The problem is it was not his name on the AST we signed and I foolishly let him take our signed agreement in exchange for his promise to get me a copy which he never did. He claimed the name belonged to his solicitor and that he indeed was the landlord. This was over a year ago and I cannot remember the name on the AST. Before the LBA he danced around any questions I asked relating to which scheme our deposit was protected by and just wanted to talk about his carpets. After receiving it he is very aggressive and rude, swearing at me and saying his solicitor will send me deposit protection details by the end of the week along with the bill for the carpets and then hanging up on me. He has had the LBA for 2 weeks already with no response so while this may sound like progress if he were going to send this information he would have already. I checked the Land Registry to see if I could confirm his ownership and again the supposed landlord is not the owner of the property. So to summarise I find myself with this problem. I have all details needed to take the man I thought was our landlord to court but this may not be the right person. He has never formally responded so I don't have a physical record of him claiming to be our landlord. Unfortunately I don't remember the name on my AST but I know it's not this man. I have bank statements showing the bank account my deposit and rent payments went into but don't know who this belongs to. I have the owners name but he may not be the person who was renting me the property and therefor wouldn't be responsible. 10 smileys for anyone who can suggest a workable solution for getting my deposit back that doesn't involve paying a solicitor loads of money I don't have. And I'll buy you a beer if you live anywhere near central London.

Hello all. Are there any rules governing or guiding out of court settlements for non protection of our deposit? We've moved out of our property and discovered the estate agent/landlord never protected our deposit. Instead the money was scooted into a black hole by the estate agent, and the police are following up on this. However our legal claim (i believe) is with the landlord not the agent, and any 'understanding' the landlord had with the estate agent is a secondary legal matter. Over 1 month later, we still don't have the deposit back, as it's tangled up between the loss adjusters/insurers/police. We've notified our landlord that it's his responsibility (he says it's not) and said that we'll go to court for the deposit, costs and non-protection fee of 3x deposit. This is the third message we've served to the landlord, and the first time we've threatened to go legal. We are entitled to almost £10,000 from a successful court judgement, but are not particularly inclined to go to court unless we have to. My question is what is a reasonable claim for an out of court settlement? Also, could we liable for the landlords legal costs if the courts fail to award the non-protection penalty? (there seems to be less clarity in practice on this issues than the letter of the law might suggest) Lastly can we ask for a nominal amount to cover the stress and time spent as a result of non-protection/non-return of deposit or would this weaken our court case if it comes to that? (Say, £600 - on top of our deposit for example) I'm naturally disinclined towards litigation culture, but the fact that our landlord is taking no responsibility for our situation (and charging us £25 to replace a lightbulb on top of this) makes me want to assert our rights here. Lastly, we do in some ways feel sorry for our landlord, who may have innocently (if not rather lazily) assumed that the estate agents had done this... Any advice appreciated!