This seems like outright fraud - how can they charge a cleaning fee and then perform no cleaning?
In practice in many cases you move out leaving the place very habitable, you get told they "had" to clean up your mess, and it's a suspiciously round number like £80 and they have plenty more "necessary" charges like this. In theory in the UK they're required to provide receipts showing their actual expense, but in practice they're looking at this as free revenue and most of their clients can't fight back.
I was buying, freeing me from the obvious revenge if I say "Fuck you" but there were a lot of other things to do for the move and having fought them down from the original outrageous fees they wanted I gave up although I did get as far as reporting them to their regulator and threatening legal action. In hindsight I'm quite sure I could have got to $0 and possibly also got the most senior woman who was straight up lying and clearly had done all this many times removed from the register of people fit to let out properties, but I didn't and I feel bad about that.
A friend in the UK had his deposit withheld as "mail charges" by his landlord upon moving out. Turned out the fine print in his lease said that he wasn't allowed to receive mail at the house he was legally renting.
Not a native speaker. How do you refer to the pieces of paper that the Royal Mail sometimes drop through your letterbox?
This is unlike the US Postal Service, which delivers "mail".
The comment claiming not to know what "mail" was clearly struck people as a little dismissive of US English (any native English speaker knows both "mail" and "post", regardless of which one is used locally)
Pretty sure that is not a stipulation you can legally put in a tenancy contract. Because both parties have to be able to serve notice on the other via post in writing. Same reason you are legally entitled to know the postal address of the landlord.
They had to go to small claims. You can't claim a repair fee for some scratches and dents in drywall that you had crowbarred out the day after vacation of the property.
It already had remarks on it like "blinds dirty, need professional cleaning", "scuffs on drywall, needs painting", "carpet stains, need professional cleaning".
Huh.
She comes in, grabs the paperwork from her desk and says "Alright, let's do this". "Actually, I couldn't help but notice you'd already started charging me for things before we've even inspected the apartment". Cue some stammering. "Oh... uhh... that's strange. That must have already been on the form when I copied it from someone else's" (Oh, really, the printed form with my info with blue pen writing?).
And then there was the time that I needed a six month lease, but the PM company didn't want to do less than 12. I said "what it I pay the six months in full, up front, and the lease has no extension, so you know that I'll be gone and you can be planning for the next tenant in advance?". They talk to the owner, sure, that will work. I write a check for $14,000, six months rent at $2,000/mo, plus a security deposit. "That will be $18,000, actually." Huh? "We also need first and last month." Uhhh, what? It took far too long to explain to them that they were getting first, last, and the intermediary in the form of $12K. And got the distinct impression, from the stubborn inability to "comprehend" and "explain" that they thought that I wouldn't question it and just hand over another $4,000.
It wasn't difficult, though it helped that I'd taken lots of pictures on the day I moved out
Plenty alternatives to renting a car in Europe. Hit them where it hertz. Take a punt on smaller companies that are competing with eg total all inclusive insurance. Yup they're a bit more expensive sometimes but can result in an better overall experience (there are lots of scammy local companies too)
I'd rather be charged a bit more upfront than to see mystery charges showing up on my card after I check out or return a car in the same condition I received it.
Allowing this type of stuff to go unpunished also just hurts honest businesses and distorts the market, since in travel search aggregators, the primary sorting criterion is price.
Maybe it should be called an accelerated asset deprecation fee.