Hi everyone,
I’m currently in a dispute with my landlord through Mydeposits Scotland and it’s now my turn to submit evidence.
One of the things we’re disputing is her trying to blame us for breaking a wardrobe. The backboard of the wardrobe was falling apart at the back when we moved in, and she has since discovered that one of the runners that the drawer sits on has been replaced (probably tenants before us or because she bought it second hand).
We were completely unaware of this because we never took the drawer out during our tenancy. What I then think has happened is she has tried to move the wardrobe causing the pins holding the shelf to split because it’s so rickety.
Now here’s the worst bit: she put in her dispute form that, while she was collecting the keys from my mother and wife, that my mother told her my father (joiner) had been in the flat fixing some things. She wrote that she suspects ‘in his negligence while replacing the runner that he broke the shelf’.
The above is a complete, blatant lie. My father has never actually been to my flat, let alone try and repair anything. My mother never said anything of the sort to her. The only reason my mother was there with my wife was because I ended up in hospital during the move out process with a very rare septic infection of a joint.
The landlord has used the right hand runner (old) in her evidence as ‘how it looked before we moved in’. This is another lie because I reiterate: nobody repaired nor attempted to repair anything while we lived there.
My fear is the following: the move-out was so stressful with my wife having to do everything and me in hospital, that she didn’t really take any photos, especially of inside the wardrobe drawers!! My landlord knows this and is trying to take advantage. All we have is an image of the wardrobe on the inventory (clearly showing nothing broken), which makes me worry that they will think we did break it.
Will her lying so blatantly hold up? I have evidence throughout our tenancy of her lying on numerous occasions to heating engineers to try and speed them up, and putting us in uncomfortable situations by saying things like we ‘have a toddler so that should speed them up to get the heating fixed’ (it’s all WhatsApp evidence, and we don’t have a toddler). This is proof she has a propensity for lying. Should I use this evidence to fight our corner?
We are most upset by the accusations and the fact she has so horribly lied to try and get money out of us. I’d just like to know what people on here think and where we stand seeing as we have so little photographic evidence. She’s trying to get us to pay for a brand new wardrobe, approx £250 (not much but money we need), as well as a couple of other minor things.
Thanks!
Stephen.