Apparently you emailed the estate agent on April 3, 2020 to say you were struggling to pay the rent. You then agreed to the release of your full £2,930 deposit from the DPS back to the landlord, £1,234 of which was used to pay two months’ worth of rent.
You topped this up with a £230 payment directly to the estate agent. Your remaining deposit of £1,695 was then paid back to the estate agent where it was supposed to have been protected under another official scheme. I’ll come on to what happened to it later.
I asked you outright: had you written to me hoping the agent might pay you £2,930, when you knew you were actually only owed £1,695? Having been told the agency’s version of events, this appeared to jog your memory and you also unearthed an amended tenancy agreement dated April 7, 2020, which stated that your deposit was now £1,695.
However, you still maintained that you felt this deposit had not been protected, as the deadline had passed for having it returned. The estate agents told me no deadlines had been breached.
When I queried why you had told me you were owed £2,930 you said: “I never told them the amount of the deposit to be paid back. I just asked for my full deposit. If a big company, makes elementary mistakes, why not me?”
Four days later you repaid the £1,234 you were never owed back to the estate agents. I wonder if you were as surprised as I was, once I knew the truth, that the agents coughed up £2,930 before properly investigating. I think it probably panicked because a journalist from a national newspaper was looking into their branch.
After all, there were still unanswered questions over your remaining £1,695 deposit. We have been told by the agents that you are far from the only client whose deposits appear to have “vanished”.
I pressed the agents on what had happened to your £1,695 since it was paid back in 2020. Your amended contract seemed to say it was still with the DPS, but the DPS confirmed this was not the case.
The estate agents said it was supposed to have been insured under another scheme called the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, where the money would have sat in the agent’s account but been insured by TDS.
Had you filled out the right form your money would have been protected, it said, but you say you never heard anything about TDS protection.
You wrote to me to uncover the truth about your “vanishing” deposit, and I have done what you asked to the best of my ability. Some of my discoveries may have gone further than you were expecting, and they have shocked me too.
This is the first time I’ve had to retrieve money back from a reader to reimburse a company, and I hope it will be the last.
