UK Landlord Forum / Life

I have recently begun letting my house through a letting agent, the agent is a one woman band and she runs the whole business.  The business is listed as a limited company and after some concerns I checked it out with Companies House.  She has a strike against the company and has not submitted any accounts since beginning trading in 2012.  Unfortunately I have found this out later, I am in dispute with her regarding the amount of money she has charged for services, currently the tenant's and I are trying to trace the bond which doesn't appear to have been lodged.  The question is can I recover the money from her as an individual or only through the company?, the company likely to be dissolved soon.  We no written agreement between us.  If I can't recover the money, how can I stop her from doing this again?

Personally, I would sever all links. Get the rent paid to you direct, agree with the tenant that you will set aside what would have been her commission to build up a "deposit" again for the tenant.

Write to the local paper with her details and her trading practice.

This isn't the right thing to do, but as a person hiding behind incorporation without submitting accounts she is a thief.

Thats what I would do, you have to choose your own course as you see fit.

If you have no written agreement, is there any way to find out who you entered into your verbal contract with?
The company's failure to comply with it's obligations doesn't invalidate its contracts (it doesn't sound like a business you'd want to trade with long term though).

If you agreed that "she" would do x for you, there's no reason for you think that she was a company or which company it was.
If she was talking to you in an office with Acme Ltd all over the place, it's more likely that you should have known you were dealing with a company.

Who you were doing business with affects who you can recover from.

It's going to be hard without a written contract to recover anything without some cost, effort and stress.
It's your word against hers - and while most of this kind of thing that makes it to court (or pre-trial hearing) gets resolved essentially on the basis that x was clearly paying y for something
and its hard for y, who is forced to argue that they hadn't agreed to do anything in order to get away with doing nothing, to explain why x would agree to pay them for doing nothing.

If she's smart, her argument would be that your agreement was with the company not her, and the company had (unfortunately) ceased trading - leaving her out of pocket.

Write to her, as a person not the company, terminating your agreement to do "list of things" and asking for the details of where the deposit is lodged and for her assistance in recovering it.
If you're ever so lucky, she might respond (even negatively) which gives some support to the existence of a contract and to it being with her rather than her company.

If you write to a newspaper (and they publish it or she finds out) and what you suggest that she has done can't be proven (see above),
there's a risk your actions might be defamatory. Which is not at all helpful to you.

Note however, that your agent is representing you, and it is you who are required to lodge the deposit and provide the proof to the tenant (for example).
Your unfortunate choice of someone incompetent puts you at some risk from action by the tenant (and makes it difficult to evict them or end the tenancy).