Monday, July 09, 2007

Done a runner

This whole tenant situation was a bit tense this past week. After last weekend, when the tenancy expired and the tenants refused to leave, we geared up for an all out war of paperwork in the courts. But after getting a whole lot of attitude from the !£$%^&* tenants, they said that they would leave on Friday.

Once we foud out that filing paperwork at the court would cost us £150 ($300) we decided to hold off to see if the would actually leave on Friday without a fight.

When I called on Thursday to arrange a check out time, Friday had become Saturday, and I saw before me a future filled with this same phone conversation over and over again. However, he finally agreed to a concrete time on Saturday. It was a good sign.

We drove down to Eastbourne, about an hour and a half away from us, and at the appointed time we rang the bell. No one answered. We went upstairs and rang the bell. Still no answer. We let ourselves in and the flat was empty: they had "done a runner" as the Brits would say.

Plus side: they are gone.
Minus side: we have no forwarding address and they owe us money.

Sigh.

But at least we didn't have to go to court, which would not have been entertaining.
What was entertaining, however, was the lady on the other end of the National Landlord's Associate advice line, who got more incensed at the situation than I was. She encouraged me to write a letter to the tenant's father decribing ourselves as honest people just trying to get by and the "disgusting behaviour" of the tenants. Clearly, she is a woman who loves her job. And I must say, I am tempted to take her advice.

3 comments:

Steve_M said...

Good riddance.

yamster said...

So sorry to hear this! Hope you have better luck with the next tenant(s).

alvinaling said...

What a pain in the a*s. Sorry you had to go through all of this, but I'm glad they're gone.