Our brief stay in Harpenden this year was an illuminating refresher course on how humiliating and difficult it can be to rent a flat. I had not rented since the late 90s and had been amazed at the amount that was being charged for a fairly ordinary one bedroom flat in Shepherd's Bush - not that we got the chance to pay that though because no one was interested in giving us a six month let, even when we offered to pay up front. Even accounting for inflation I would not have been able to afford to stay in any of these flats if I had been at the stage I was at when I was 28. The monthly rent of one of those flats would have gone a long way to paying the monthly mortgage on my much larger house. Perhaps I am spending too much time with my head in pre-revolutionary Russia, but with those that have exploiting those that don't on this kind of level makes me slightly surprised that there isn't open revolution.
But of course as a tenant the onus is on you to show that you can afford to stay in the place and the competition is fierce. It was such a situation that allowed a conman to steal the deposit that I (and it turned out eight other people) had put down on a flat in 1994. We were keen to prove we could afford the flat. He knew we'd be falling over ourselves to do whatever we were told.
But at least the man who did that was sent to prison. It seems that many landlords are taking the piss and pulling off what I would consider just as big a con. And they're not just taking the deposits. They're taking months of rent too.
Even as one of the people who are lucky to own a house and be relatively well off I felt a bit sickened on the behalf of all those that didn't. And amazed that anyone could afford to live this way, handing over what must be a good proportion of their income to live in a flat they wouldn't even eventually own.
Eventually we moved out of town to Harpenden where we were allowed to rent for six months (though only with negotiation). We were good tenants, I thought, paying up on time, keeping the place in order and even offering the landlord the chance to rent the flat out to someone else when we moved out a month early (still paying for that additional month of course). We had left a month's deposit, of course, but I couldn't see any good reason why we wouldn't get that all back. We hadn't used any of the stuff that came with the flat - having put it all in a cupboard so we wouldn't confuse it with our stuff - and we'd kept the place clean and spent the last day there cleaning the small flat for a couple of hours. The hoover that came with the flat wasn't very good and the carpet was quite wiry so it was hard to get it pristine, but we left it in as good state as we arrived. The spaghetti and grime down the side of the cooker (if you shifted it out of its alcove) had been there when we arrived. We had not eaten spaghetti in the flat!
I realised last week that we hadn't yet had our deposit back and we'd tried to ring a couple of times, but the person we needed to speak to wasn't around. It's now over a month since our tenancy ended and two months since we left, so you might assume the agency would have got round to refunding us. I am not saying they were waiting to see if we remembered to ask them to have it back - they're a big nationwide company and surely they wouldn't act in that way - but they didn't automatically refund us and it took us a few calls to get to the point where we were in touch with the person who'd sort this out for us. She emailed me a couple of days ago to tell me that she was refunding our deposit, minus a fee for cleaning the flat, cleaning the carpet in the flat plus £20 for missing crockery. When I queried the cleaning charges I was told that we had agreed that those would be incurred when we signed the contract. I didn't check, but I assume that's right. But even so we had cleaned the flat and done our best with the carpet and the flat was one small bedroom, one tiny bathroom and a lounge with a poky kitchen attached. They had charged us for four hours of cleaning. I think it would have to be a very thorough cleaner with extreme OCD who could make the job last that long, especially given we had already cleaned for two hours ourselves. And the carpet cleaning fee was a staggering £130. There was only carpet in the bedroom lounge and small hallway. I don't know how much carpet cleaning costs, but that seems excessive. We'd only lived there for five months. We're not that disgusting and filthy. It felt like a rip-off at the very least. A rip-off where those that have exploit the weakness of those that don't. I didn't like it.
But the insult added to the injury was the money charged for unspecified loss of crockery. As I say we hadn't even used their crockery so it felt pretty unlikely that we had lost or broken any of it. I was sure that we hadn't. But even if we had say, broken a cup or accidentally taken a plate with us when we left, it did seem a bit petty to charge us for it. I think if we'd broken all of the plates and cups in the flat that you'd be able to pick up similar standard replacements for £20. Perhaps somehow we had broken or lost something (even though it's hard to see how), but surely in this case it would be good policy to let us know exactly what it was. If only to stop an unscrupulous landlord (and I am certainly not saying this is what has happened here, but the system is open to corruption) just saying that something was missing when it wasn't and taking another £20 from people who have already paid out several thousand pounds in rent and a couple of hundred pounds in "cleaning" fees.
It's not like the kind of people who live in a one bedroom flat on the outskirts of Harpenden are going to be the kind of people who have the time, money or influence to make a fuss about something like this. And if they did happen to have time, money and influence then surely they wouldn't be petty enough to argue the toss over £20.
But then they didn't bank on me. If they're going to be petty enough to charge me £20 for a plate that I couldn't possibly have broken then I am petty enough to make them work for that £20. If they think it costs £200 to clean a pretty clean one bedroom flat then I am going to have to find a way to earn £200 to make up for that.
So my first mission was to discover what was missing from the flat. Just in case I had for some reason gone insane and thought that the item in the cupboard of things we didn't use was ours and had taken it home. I could then return it and save myself £20.
If we'd been using the stuff in the flat then there might be some doubt, but because we hadn't it seemed weird. Don't you think? The woman at the agency said "With regard to the crockery, I am sorry, but the landlady does the inventories and claimed there was missing crockery – I suggested a minimal compensation which she agreed."
Not unreasonably I asked what the missing crockery was, reiterating that we hadn't used any of the crockery. You'd think if the woman from the agency was suggesting compensation that she must be aware of what the item was. Otherwise she'd just be pulling a figure from her hat. It was odd that she couldn't say what the item was, don't you think. And for a piece of crockery £20 is quite a lot. It seemed a bit fishy, but I wasn't going to accuse anyone of lying. I just asked for more information and mentioned that I'd like to get all the facts straight in case I wanted to write about this in my Metro column. Because this is just the perfect kind of story for me to write about, petty, inconsequential, reflecting as badly on me as it does on them. But also the closest I am ever going to get to Woodward and Bernstein. What if I discovered that the letting agency and the landlady were in collusion and had come up with a way of earning literally tens of pounds by pretending stuff was missing when it wasn't? What if this nationwide letting company had some kind of arrangement with a cleaning company where they would allow them to massively overcharge for a job and split the profit. Again, not for a second suggesting that is what has happened, but it's possible that it could? What if I, a man with way too much time on his hands and more influence than the usual downtrodden tenant could make a stand here and name and shame the people involved for this shoddy treatment?
It'd be exciting right.
But at least they could tell me what the crockery was - just in case they told us and I realised that I had actually broken that. I mean even though I know I didn't being told I have is convincing me that I did. I had a long conversation with my wife about whether
the pyrex dish that exploded in the sink was ours or theirs. And the only thing that makes me sure that is was ours is that we're both too freaked out by imaginary germs for us to use someone else's pyrex dish or indeed any of the fairly grotty crockery that came with the flat. Our squeamish snobbery proves our innocence.
But when someone in officialdom says something has happened you do trust them and it's amazing how you can doubt yourself.
But the woman from the lettings company has not got back to me with any more details. I expect she hopes that I will go away if she doesn't respond. But I won't go away. Because I am an idiot. I want to know what crockery is missing and I want to know why it cost £20. And if my investigation into this subject ends with me bringing down some corruption or exposing the injustice of our current house letting system or winning a Pulitzer prize or just getting my £20 back then that will just be a cherry on the cake. All that matters to me is the truth. The truth and being petty for no good reason.
