I recently paid a holding deposit of £500 to a landlord. He asked me to pay separately while not through the openrent platform, which you shouldnt!!! The landlord did not proceed with my offer because he was waiting for higher offers. I have chased him so many days for refund. He paid me £250 but he has refused to refund the remaining £250. Instead, he wants to deduct £60 for referencing fees, leaving me with only £190. Because he used open rent to do reference check. I googled online, first i am not responsible to pay the reference fees, and second, it costs £30 + VAT for open rent to do reference check.
Wonder if anyone who has the similar experience could share some tips!
Charging you a fee for referencing is illegal. Let him know that he is in breach of the Tenant Fees Act and that you intend to report him to the local Trading Standards body who are the enforcement body for the Act. That should speed up the refund.
Thanks for the tips! I already said that to the landlord. He told me to go and file a claim. Guess I will need to report to the trading standards and submit this case to the small claim court. Hope no one will go through the same thing as me!
How much was the monthly rental? The reason I ask, is the maximum holding deposit is the equivalent of 1 weeks rent only, so if they have charged you more than this as a holding deposit, they have breached that rule too. May be something extra to report to trading standards.
Sorry to hear about this. You can report the landlord by using the “Report Listing” button on the property page so we can investigate this further.
In the future, we would always recommend making payments through OpenRent by using our Rent Now service, that way we can ensure the safety of your funds.
Am glad to see that OpenRent have picked up on this. Please follow their suggestion as it is really poor behaviour on the part of this landlord. Its embarrassing for the rest of us on the system. I think you will find that most of us are decent human beings, but always use the system in future because it is there to protect you.
its below the max holding deposit! Think this landlord has been done this for few people before so he specially chose the amount which is below the threshold.