Don't Mess With The Missus

19-06-2013

Now that the dust has settled and all is done I can post an entry, even if it is a little vague on details, about something that happened recently.

When myself and the lady friend bought our house we obviously stopped renting the apartment we lived in. Over the two and a bit years living there we had a number of bad dealings with our landlord. Mainly around jobs that he should have done, you know, as the landlord. Also some bullshit about money and the likes. The lady friend never really liked him from day one, she said his attitude gave her the impression he was a chancer.

Just how much of a chancer he was only became evident after we moved out.

As most folks that rent know, you usually pay some form of security deposit before renting a place. This is usually given back after a renter leaves, but Ireland has a nasty tradition with a minority of landlords thinking they can do everything and anything to keep the full amount.

This is what happened to us. We left the place in near mint condition, he decided that he was going to hang onto the majority of the deposit.

The lady friend, never one to back down when she is right, contacted Threshold about this. They tried to sort the issue out for us, only to be told by the landlord that we had done three thousand euro worth of damage to the apartment.

Three times what the deposit was.

I figured he was doing this as a scare tactic, so on the advice of Threshold we contacted the PTRB and logged and official complaint.

That was a little over a year and a half ago. I was told by guys in work who had previously needed to use the PTRB that they worked very slowly, but got the job done in the end. So neither myself or the lady friend were worried as the months rolled by.

At one point we were asked to provide details to back up our case. The lady friend, really wanting to make sure she stuck the landlord with the pointy end of the sword, submitted back a report that would have made most murder reports seem like books for children. The details she went into, hell I wasn't even aware of them and I lived in the apartment.

Today we got the verdict on the entire thing. Basically it said that the landlord was full of horseshit, we had backed up everything with evidence whereas he had submitted a lot of handwritten "invoices" to "show" repair work to the apartment and that at the end of the day we were to be given back the deposit in full.

Not only in full, but with extra money because of damages to our reputation or some such waffle.

Bottom line, while I've always known the lady friend can fight her own battles, she could more than likely stop the next world war if given enough of a chance at it.

The Cheshire Cat ain't got a smile that matches her one right now. More so because we know that tonight the landlord is reading the same letter.

Ah justice.

Blue_jester