Estate agent attitudes to me

Harp

This is an upgrade renewal of my tenancy agreement but I recap all of it.

In August last year I had a letter from the estate agent who was being a letting agent for the landlord to say  my current tenancy agreement was ending in September and if I want to renew it. For the past 13 years, I paid a fee at £75 for 2 years tenancy agreement, but this time was different. They wanted me to pay £120 for a year tenancy agreement. I went on Facebook to mention this and many said check the new law. I checked the local council and shelter websites. This law partially came in last year and the rest supose be coming in this year. in this new law, it states if your current tenancy agreement if you agree to pay the renewal fee, you have to pay it. But as my current tenancy agreement didn't say that, by what it says, I shouldn't be charged the fee.

We went to see the estate which they showed us highlighted paragraphs of some information about it which is the same version we had but they only showed only the but they wanted to show us. They hid the important paragraph which mattered to me. We even pointed out to them that they took notice of this hidden paragraph but they said it wasn't relevant to me.

I will list the steps we took,

Managed to get hold of a woman at estate agent after she apparently was on holiday but she said to call the boss.

Called the boss but he was apparently on holiday. Finally after s few attempts got hold of him but no backing down from him.

Contacted CAB & Shelter which both said that the estate agent appears to be breaking the law.

Wrote a letter to the estate agent to say what CAB & Shelter said but they didn't back down.

Enter the frustration part. It seemed no one locally wanted to take responsibility for what to do next as we were getting passed around from council, CAB & Shelter.

Nothing happened from November for a few months over Xmas & new year.

I contacted a charity which stands up for people. They rang the estate agent to see if they changed their minds on the situation but they haven't.

In the end we went to the CAB, which they said that I was in progress taking this further with the help from CAB.

The charity called the estate agent again to say what CAB said. The estate agent gave us a verbal agreement to waive the fee.

Week later got a tenancy agreement with a covering letter in it with the fees on. Also the agreement was based on old law.

I used one of the email addresses on the covering later to basically ask them what's going on.

Their reply was that I should have a letter to state that they waived the fee. Also they said to contact someone else at the estate agent as that email address doesn't exist.

I ignored the last bit & used the same email to say I didn't have the letter. I also said I got the email address from the agreement they sent, which it seems they had sent me out of date stuff.

Finally they sent an email to say they had waived the fee and updated tenancy agreement.

wilko

@Harp, Hello and welcome, that was a well documented post and thanks for all the information, you are not a push over and stuck to your guns on this one. They the agents want or demand money for doing very little work, as yours was a renewal nothing changed it was a matter of just printing, signing and filing where companies get away with their fees for updating and cancellations when a click here or there job done minutes not hours of work. 

Harp

Thank you.
When my learning difficulties are the benefit cus part of them that I don't back down 

Adrian_Scope

Well done for seeing all that through @Harp. Congratulations on not budging and getting a good result.

Harp

Thank you.