Amethyst Residential Lettings

So we moved in from a previous rented flat in a different city and due to our circumstances we needed to move in quickly. Amethyst were very quick to process our application and I am grateful for that. The property that was rented to us was spacious and we began our tenancy without any trouble. It had storage heating which was sufficient, though took some time to tweak to the right settings for it to be comfortable. The main issue with heating that we had was that the front door had a gap of an inch at the bottom and being next to the back door of the apartment block which had a lot of footfall caused cold air to flow straight into our apartment. We dealt with this by using a draft excluder. Into the second month, the storage heater for the bedroom stopped working. We asked the landlord to get someone out to fix it. Which they did but after a few days it again stopped working. We left this for a while as we thought we didn't was to cause a fuss with the landlord after only 1 month of being in the flat. After about 2 months we noticed that the amount of hot water was becoming very limited and that if one of us had a shower or we washed the dishes it would use up all the hot water and we would have to turn on the booster to heat up more water which took about an hour. It was also at this time that I noticed that the boiler was continuously leaking hot water out of one of the overflow pipes coming out of the boiler. There was nothing I could do to stop it and so left it. After 3 months more problems began to emerge. Our electricity and water bills were very high for a 1 bedroom apartment (no gas as everything was electric) with only 2 full-time working people living in it - only occupied in the evenings & weekends. We spoke to our electricity & water providers and asked them why our bills were so high. They asked us to speak to the landlord and get them to check the storage heaters and boiler. After speaking to the landlord, we had the storage heater in the bedroom fixed that had been out of action for about 2 months, and I also mentioned that I thought the reason for the high electricity and gas bills was that the boiler was continuously throwing heated water down the drain via the overflow pipe, costing us money. I was told that the landlord had never had any issues with the boiler before and that it had been serviced and should be fine. After about another month we were gradually losing all hot water. After contacting the landlord about this we were told that they would get someone to look at the boiler. After a few days one of the landlord's friends (a boiler engineer) came by and took one look and said that he couldn't do anything as it was a special boiler which he didn't have experience with and left, the landlord said they would get someone else out to look at it. After two weeks since the problem was reported, we again chased up the landlord and they said it was proving difficult to get someone out to look at this particular boiler as there is only 1 company that make this type of boiler and that they don't make them anymore, and very few engineers are left that can service them. Eventually after another few days they had someone come out to look at the boiler and they had to replace quite a few parts on the boiler to get the overflow pipe to stop draining the hot water. After the boiler had been fixed I contacted the landlord to see if she was willing to negotiate a reduced rent for the month due to the lack of hot water and the fact that the rent we were paying was partly for the provision of the boiler which wasn't working, but she was not willing to budge at all - stating that the cost of fixing the boiler was very high and that it had caused her grief and stress... After about four months into the (contracted) six month tenancy, i began to see small insects scurrying around everywhere. I would get up in the morning to go to the toilet and would notice them moving around on the floor in the bathroom. I would sit in the lounge on the sofa after work and would see them on the floor of the lounge scurrying around. As the months went on they grew in number and became more and more apparent. I would like to say that we have never had this problem before or after this apartment so I can only attribute this to the apartment and not us. I can only assume that due to the front door of our apartment being adjacent to the back door of the apartment block (outside which the main bin for the block was kept) they were somehow coming in through there... I told the landlord about this and she was not happy with this. In fact, she was very unhappy - she said she would get an exterminator out to us. The exterminator came and the insects were gone for a few months (after which I noticed a resurgence, but thankfully we moved out!). After this i walked into the kitchen one night to get a glass of water to drink and as soon as i turned on the light i noticed a mouse running behind a cupboard. Great, another problem. After this I stayed out of the kitchen as much as i could and both myself and my partner started eating out a lot more to avoid having to cook anything in the kitchen. We contacted the landlord again about this and they had another exterminator come out to lay some mouse traps. The exterminator looked at the number of mouse droppings and the strength of the smell of mouse urine and deduced that there were quite a few mice. We asked him where he thought they were coming from and he thought they had found a way in from the outside (our flat was on the ground floor). I asked him to relay him comments to the landlord so that she could do something about it. We did not hear from the landlord about this or any other work that she was going to do to fix this problem. After eight months in the flat I got a call out of the blue whilst at work from the landlord to say that she was extremely unhappy and that she had to end the tenancy. I was floored by this as it was completely out of the blue and was told by people that I looked shaken and upset for the rest of the day. It may seem like the landlord is the one causing the issues here, and not Amethyst Lettings. The crucial bit of information here is that the landlord for this particular flat was one of the directors of Amethsyt (it was owned by her). So the estate agent and landlord was one and the same. In hindsight, I do wonder why i didn't end the tenancy after the six month contracted period... I am now glad to be out of that nightmare and into a much better flat with a much more friendly landlord and estate agents!

Attached Files