UK Landlord Forum / Life

I'm looking for a feedback on a negative experience with the MyDeposits ADR process. I am particularly interested if anyone has had similar or been able to challenge a decision.

I should say that I know these deposit services don't do appeals. I'm sure there are plenty of people – landlords and tenants alike – who feel hard-done-by. But I do think there are some specific points here which suggest the correct process wasn't followed.
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The background: In Jan 2022, my friend and I launched an ADR claim with MyDeposits after our landlord's agent refused to negotiate over some quite hefty deposit deductions (over £1000). We felt these claims were excessive and that an objective viewer would agree with us. We sent detailed evidence, much of which was disputing specific claims by making reference to the agent's check-in and check-out reports.

A few weeks before the hearing, we were sent a copy of the other party's evidence. We noticed some problems:

- Despite claiming £450 for the cleaning, the agent only supplied a receipt for £295.

- There were no receipts for almost all of the other claims – the vast majority of the damages were evidenced by nothing other than a reference to the check-out report and an arbitrary price (i.e. £100 for cracks on the sofa).

- There was, however, a receipt for £600 for the replacement of the carpets, dated 2 months after we left. We had never been informed of this cost before.

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The result: A few weeks ago, we received a short (5 page) decision from MyDeposits saying that the landlord had been awarded just over 55% the disputed amount.. This surprised us given the above points. In addition:

- The arbitrator held that we should only be responsible for 40% of the cleaning cost (as the flat was not clean at the beginning of the tenancy). However, they calculated this using the £450 figure rather than the invoice amount (£295).

- All of the agent's damage claims were upheld. For the majority of these, the arbitrator applied a 50% split (i.e. reducing the agent's claims by half), despite the fact that landlord had not submitted receipts or evidence of actually replacing items. In some cases, we had submitted evidence that items (e.g. Argos sofa) cost less than the agent was claiming, but this was ignored.

- We were also charged for some of the carpet replacement, despite the fact this was not in the list of deductions sent to us. (In fairness, they had made a claim for "carpet cleaning", but the receipt was for replacing the carpets 2 months after we left).

- The decision did not make reference to some of the most pertinent claims in our evidence – for example, that we had been charged to replace furniture described in the check-in report as 'soiled', or that we had been charged for not putting the curtains back on the hooks (the agent did not say these were broken or damaged). Instead we got the impression that the arbitrator had essentially decided on an overall 50% split, and then worked backwards from there.

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As I say, I am aware that there is limited scope to challenge these decisions in substance, but we were surprised by point 1 in particular. I was under the impression that a landlord had to provide actual evidence they had incurred a cost for cleaning? Yet instead the decision used a higher amount which had not been evidenced

I am very interested to hear the perspective of people who have been through the process on either side. Perhaps it is just a case of getting a particular unsympathetic arbitrator but the decision seemed to be out of line with what I'd read elsewhere on the internet.

I had a deposit dispute where I stained the shower tray by putting the unblocked on for too long.  I proposed a compensation fee but the agent wanted to charge for a full replacement so it went to dispute. The ADR charged me a compensation fee as if the shower tray was new when it was several years old when we moved in.

It sounds like you're victim to a similar error.  The other deductions seem pretty typical though.

Quote from: Inspector on May 05, 2022, 01:36:10 PM
I had a deposit dispute where I stained the shower tray by putting the unblocked on for too long.  I proposed a compensation fee but the agent wanted to charge for a full replacement so it went to dispute. The ADR charged me a compensation fee as if the shower tray was new when it was several years old when we moved in.

It sounds like you're victim to a similar error.  The other deductions seem pretty typical though.

Interesting. Yes, I have read similar elsewhere (i.e. looking at the TrustPilot reviews for MyDeposits). My finger-in-the-air impression is that some decisions go unfairly against landlords while some go unfairly against tenants. Of course, some degree of subjectivity is inevitable but you might hope they would have stronger guidelines to make it more consistent.