Tenants That Constantly Complain About Every Minor Issue

Not really a maintenance issue, but sort of plumbing related.

Long story but I ended up buying a Pub, and my 5 bed house was sat empty, all furnished and nice. So I let it to a lady whose old man was in prison, her daughter and husband and her other Daughter who had some needs of her own.

They didn't want the dishwasher so removed it, Daughters Husband came ranting into the full Pub (which was next door) shouting that the dishwasher was leaking and any damage they wouldn't be paying for, "I been in the Navy and I done plumbing, so I did sort oh"

Oh really.

" Yeah I put a banana in the grey pipe thing"

So there you go, our greatest senior service teaches how to stop drainage pipes discharging with Large finger shaped fruit.....

We never got along after that......

Where to start! 1.) Last week - Fit a new light bulb in bathroom as the old one was flickering! 2) 2 weeks ago -Andy, the window is drafty can you have a look - upon visit and inspection the tenant had somehow removed the upvc plastic strip that enables the handle to pull the window tight, meaning that the window was slight ajar and thus drafty 3)Andy, do i have to clean out the fireplace as its dirty?? 4)The wind has broken a fence panel and the neighbour says it is your fence, can you fix it pls (actually was not our fence)

In reality, i just laugh with my tenants when they ask for daft things, i always fix for them and never charge. Long term income is worth the few daft repairs

Oh how you all laugh.

While I used to love tinkering away on the little things. Boiler pressure, tap washers, lightbulbs on 8ft ceilings etc but now I have a spinal injury but still "look" ok

In guessing my landlord would link I'm a lazy so & so without actually knowing the full facts.

Be a bit more professional & take your rent money without slagging off your tenant!

One of the most annoying callouts has to be "I've got no electrics" and when you ask if they've checked the fuses they say yes but you get to the property to find that no they haven't and that's all it needed :/ When you say "I thought you checked the fuses" they reply with "errrr I dint know what you meant" ffs why didn't you say so instead of lying and wasting my time when I could have easily talked you through it over the phone if you'd just admitted you didn't know what I was talking about!!

Ahhhh rant over, it's good to get it off your chest ;-)

Oh well I have a good one to sort those irritating tenants that complain about almost every little insignificant thing like asking me to send my contractor to change the light bulb.

I've noticed that if I call my car insurance company to ask a simple question about their charges or what have you, they have a policy of the more calls they get it can affect my renewal insurance policy rate. Even if there is no claim etc.

So now when a tenant sends me an email for maintenance, if it is extremely insignificant issue like they want their light bulb replaced or change the battery in the smoke alarm, I politely provide a statement to the affect that all calls and emails are recorded and may affect the tenant's eligibility and rent review at the end of their tenancy.

You see, no landlord in his right mind would like to renew an existing tenancy if he has to deal with very unreasonable tenants.

But hay, I'm happy to, at a premium of course.

The way I see it is, just like there are high maintenance properties, there are high maintenance tenants. Therefore, if they want to stay on, the rent will have to be higher.

It's true that some tenants are daft (I blame their parents); I had a flatmate who lived in the dark for months because she was scared to put in a new lightbulb. Instead of asking us to help her due to her phobia, she rang the landlord. So it didn't get changed until the landlord had to come around for something else. Silly (but otherwise lovely) girl.

On the other hand, we pay exorbitant rents to live in total sh*tholes most of the time. So we tend to think, why the hell should we lift a finger? We pay more than enough cash, more than a mortgage would actually cost us these days. Most landlords seem to think a state of general disrepair (particularly in London) is more than enough and aim only to bleed you for as much rent as possible. Lots of which seems to go offshore, by the way...

There's right and wrong on both sides.

Is property really that scarce where you are that you have no choice but to "rent shitholes"?

All of our properties are maintained to a good standard so no they don't have the excuse you mention above. They pair a fair rent for a good property yet a proportion of our tenants still call up with these stupid 'maintenance issues' acting like they live in a hotel :/ But as the Landlord says it's just one of those things you have to deal with....

The pilot light going out on the boiler…that it an irritating call out especially when there are instructions beside the ignite button that say “push to ignite”.

I also can’t understand it when problem isn’t reported that could cause damage to the property. The same tenant (of boiler ignition fame) when she moved in had a brand new kitchen. She fitted her washing machine to the connector under the sink but didn’t put the stop cap on the other side meant for the dishwasher, if you had one. The cupboard carcass got ruined as she just put a bucket under to catch the resulting overflow and then forgot to slop the bucket out after a while. She only mentioned that ‘leak’ whilst I was there to press the ignite button on the boiler

Different Helen - this one's an agent.
My favourite is bleeding radiators. I carry a bleed key in my handbag. Some tenants don't have a clue that cold top to radiator means it needs bleeding and wouldn't know how to bleed the rad anyway.

We get loads of silly maintenance issues, but we always go to look at the problem before calling out the professionals, unless it is a tenant that we know is sensible. To be fair, many tenants don't have even the most basic of tools, so can't deal with minor problems. It seems to me that the younger ones have no concept of DIY and genuinely don't know how to deal with basic problems. Perhaps this is the result of the 'renting generation'.

Far more worrying is the tenant that doesn't report serious issues, like a leaking roof, because it is not affecting their comfort YET. I'll save those for your next blog.

Totally agree with the Helens.
Yep, might be annoying to see the small stuff however recently have had to be more than patient when dealing with "we just got back from holiday and now there's water coming through the floorboards - we thought we might have had a leak a few weeks ago". Tsk. Cue flooring ripped out and replaced after 4 week dry-out...

Be thankful for small tasks :-)

Most pathetic reason to calling the landlord was my tenant who was complaining that her living room light was not working, my husband went over to the property, looked at the light which looked absolutely fine, put on electric tester which showed power getting to it! so he changed the light bulb, holy shit, tenant had light - he was not happy, my husband that is, tenant was joyous!!

Rookie error, always check the tenant has done the obvious things before you go! ;-)

On these notes about 'the light build syndrome' (we've had the bleeding rads one) what do you landlords reckon should be the minimum amount of time between inspections?
You can usually pick up mould, carpet moth and general lazy tosser syndrome every 6 months I think!

HeHeHe Mr. Landlord,

Better your tenants complain about EVERYTHING rather than do it themselves, examples:

Copper pipe out of wall, 3 inches of pipe after 90 degree bend then compression fitting with 3/4 inch socket. Flexible pipe from socket to tap springs minor leak (cost to replace pipe 10 minutes and £2.00 for spares). As other tap still working tenant kaffirs copper pipe with hammer and folds it over where it exits the wall to stop water. When he leaves I need to completely remove kitchen cupboards then use a hammer and cold chisel to expose enough pipe to fit another compression fitting capillary solder "L" and extension to socket, time taken 2 days and £40 parts and tool hire for the oxy acetylene torch as a normal blow torch sinks heat into the surroundings too quickly!
Next one:
U-bend under sink springs leak (leaks lots). tenant uses insulating tape to bind up u bend (minor leak now....slow drip) instead of 3 jubilee clips and a u bend, 30 minutes and maybe £5 parts the slow drip ruins the entire cupboard including shelves and bottoms of doors.
Better they should phone and complain rather than "fix" it themselves plus it avoids the shouting when you not only have to keep their deposit to rectify the damage caused by their "repairs" but chuck in cash and time of your own.
Agree landlording is a long term business.

My top favourite has to be - the radiator in the bathroom is too hot... to touch. Really, really?

Also quite liked the complaint of the driveway gates were squeaky and maybe needed replacing.

Fee x

Had a tenant who complained that he couldn't open the back door as the lock was broken and the key wouldn't work. Went round myself as locksmiths are stupidly expensive and he was trying to open it with the front door key! He is a lecturer at our local uni so clearly has brains but just wasn't using them.
On the flip side though another tenant called me a few weekends ago as the communal drain down the side of his flat was overflowing. Tried to get hold of the managing agents and left him liaising with the water board who then said it wasn't their problem. He took matters into his own hands and bought some drainage rods and unblocked the system himself! He even then wrote a letter to all the other flats asking them not to flush wet wipes down the drain - above and beyond and the landlord loves him (the tenant didn't even want the money back for the rods!)
Unfortunately he is the exception and most tenants cannot be bothered to put in the effort of discovering what the problem really is - tripped fuses being a particularly common one...

Rofl....I came across this website while looking up something for a friend who is going through major hell with her severe lazy-arsed landlord (who is breaking a few H&S laws/rules) and found this blog. OMG The Landlord I do actually get where you are coming from as a landlord with whiny tenants but there are some of us tenants who are pretty damn good to our landlord and extremely patient too.

For example my last property I had real issues with the boiler and I mean for the most of winter I spent waking up every morning to have to go into the loft (yes my boiler was nicely situated in the loft?!) to stand for 10mins while I tried and tried to get the damn thing to re-ignite, some of us do know about the "push to re-ignite"!! I was in that house for 4yrs and was constantly contacting my LL about this boiler (which was an old one) to which he would send out his waste of space plumber to "fix" the boiler. Every Christmas I go to stay at my parents, for a few days before and a few days after, and guess what.....every time I returned home I would have no heating or hot water and it would take over a week to even get the w.o.s plumber to come visit and attempt to sort it. It never got sorted properly and what really began to pmo is that I have a young child but that never matter.

I work in DIY and I am not afraid to do 'minor' things around the property, I may be blonde but I am certainly not of the dumb variety. I decorate, will deal with lightbulbs, mould, taps, toilet issues and will only call my LL if it is something electrical (and I check fuses first) or something I do not feel comfortable with dealing with myself. My new LL is fantastic, could not ask for a nicer one. He has allowed me free reign on decoration (it had been vacant for 6mths and was tired inside), put up worktops I brought with me to increase the work surface in the kitchen and has been patient with me as I was made redundant and benefits have messed me around. In return he is now getting a brand new boiler and both lofts insulated for free.

I definitely think it is how a person is brought up as to how a tenant behaves!!!!

PS I own my own tool box and tools and they certainly aren't all shiny and new ;)

Got to laugh.

Last night after a roast dinner, some wine and cider and a couple of episodes of breaking bad on Netflix I got a call from a lady tenant in one of the flats I have 120 miles from home.

"There is a beeping noise in the Hall"

Me " Oh really, where from"

"There is a black box with numbers on it, I think its that"

Me " You mean the water meter you had installed?"

"Did I?"

Me, " It's not that try the Smoke Alarm in the centre of the ceiling, its probably that"

"But I dont smoke I gave up ages ago" [flat is yellow with nicotine, and looks and smells like a 1930's gentlemans club]

" Oh yes, shall I hit it?"

Me "No you need to remove it, unhinge it, replace the battery and replace it on the ceiling, then it will stop"

"But it's annoying, I can't get up there"

Me " It's annoying as it's telling you it's about to stop working, and when it stops you wont be protected by it"

"Shall I hit it, oh I hit it and the lid fell down, its still beeping listen"

Me "Yes thats the smoke alarm, you need to replace the battery"

" I cant get up there"

Me " Well find a neighbour, Perhaps Lee next door, or Rob upstairs, or the chap in the Garden next to your kitchen, what about asking Cindy in the house behind you?"

" I AM NOT ASKING CINDY" "Can I have Robs number"

Me " No I can't give you his number"

"Okay I have the chap in the gardens number, I'll call him, I cant go outside and upstairs to Robs [however I am capable of driving to Surrey and frequent visits to the Hospital]

Me "Okay, thanks"

"Thanks for letting me know what it was"

Me "Bye"........

The fact that her idea of sorting the issue was "shall I hit it" I found quite comical, as well as the fact she's been there 4 years, and assumed as the smoke alarm never went off it didn't work, and that the likeliest source of the noise was a water meter.

The poor love is in her early Seventies, and not in the best of health.

She is strange and lovely too.

The ceiling is 7ft I suppose. Artexed splendidly....

Breaking Bad is awesome, we are in the middle of series 3, so have about 35 hours left to go, what with that, Grimm, Revolution, Arrow, Marvels agent of Shield, Blacklist and the thing about Nurses me and my son have hardly any time for Pornography at present!

Love this post. Very entertaining and I recognize this myself as I am a property manager and deal with useless people everyday.

I have just started a blog about Property management. Would be great if you could have a look!

http://propertybyem.tumblr.com/

Great stories ! My best is a text to say one of the wall sockets was broke (sic) or so her partner had texted her. So, I asked her to check it by plugging in a table lamp or similar. When she got home , he had failed to switch on the tumble dryer he was plugging in !! Duh.

I'm absolutely loving these posts, I'm a new, reluctant, landlord who's husband had the grand idea of us investing in some property, but essentially it's my job to maintain them as he's;
a) worse than me at DIY and b) so busy at work that he's rarely around to help
Anyway I thought I'd been dealt a bad hand with 'precious' tenants but now I see it's all completely normal
So far I've had a tenant (an electrician ) contact me to say that light bulbs need changing, could I come and do it and could I supply them. When I said it wasn't my job I was then asked what type of bulbs were they, did I keep a note?....
I was also recently contacted by new tenants to say there was no heating or hot water only to find that the carefully left out instructions of how to program the system hadn't been used so essentially they were never going to have any!,,,
I've also had a set of tenants that always left it until I've had a few drinks on a Friday and Saturday night to tell me their often minuscule problems and sometimes when I rang them back are so incomprehensible drunk that I've had to leave it until they're sober to sort out the 'broken' ( it wasn't) boiler!
My point is WHY bother me in the first place if you're in the middle of partying and it's clearly not an emergency
Anyhow I've had a right laugh at these stories, the banana in the pipe especially !!, :0)

Hi,

I've just done my first quarterly inspection on my property and although most things are ok I noticed, when reattaching a kitchen cupboard door, that one kitchen cupboard was being used to store vegetables (and associated dirt) and had many small insects crawling around the vegetables and the cupboard. I am doing the inspection, by agreement, when the tenants are away and I want to know if it is ok for me to empty the cupboard of the vegetables and dirt and insects and clean it thoroughly to stop getting any infestation? Must I keep the vegetables and return them to the tenants or can I throw them out. Is it ok for me to insist that they don't keep vegetables with earth/dirt inside the kitchen cupboards and so eliminate the food and home source for these vermin?

I don't want to allow a practice which is likely to cause a vermin (insect) infestation that will be much harder to clear up after 12 months or so when the tenants move on - assuming that they do?

I am sure that I read somewhere that it is the landlords responsibility to make sure that there are no vermin of any type in the property to provide the tenants with a healthy, secure and livable accommodation? Can anyone confirm this?

Am I right to insist that they don't keep vegetables in the cupboards and if I do should I provide them with a vegetable rack or something similar?

I am happy to work with the tenants to provide them with some vegetable storage facility but hopefully not one that encourages the insect vermin. They are the really small crawling insects that you get in sugar and flour and things like that or at least that is what I think they are.

Any input from anyone will be much appreciated.

Elaine

I know you money-grabbing con men landlord scumbags love to gripe about your tenants, but I suspect the reason they ring you with a minor maintenance issue, is because they don't wish to try to fix it, botch the repair and then have you greedy tw*ts steal 75% of their deposit for 'toilet roll repairs and time spent organising repairs'

Landlords - the modern day concentration camp guards. Up against the wall, motherf*ckers - your reckoning is coming...

Stumbled across this site after tenant phoned to complain that both sink taps are loose and need fixing. He is an engineer and moved in two days ago. The taps were fine while I lived in the flat.

Appreciate it’s been a while since the original post which was hilarious but after seeing some of the comments Above I couldn’t resist chipping in.

In my experience the best tenants are the ones that report every issue as they occur allowing you the opportunity to make the decision on how you want to put things right, after all if it is your business so you will be better placed to make the decision.

The tenants you don’t want are the ones who don’t mention a thing then go onto complain that you didn’t fix a problem you didn’t know about, which by the time you find out about has become a huge problem.... the best way to avoid this is to make sure your customers know that you are grateful they reported an issue rather than being rude, sarky or condescending when they do.

Viewing every property you let as an individual business and every tenant as a valued customer that is paying the amount you set to provide them with agreed services alleviates a hell of a lot of stress.

Looking at the bigger picture it is better to have a low turnover of tenants as turnovers are what bugger the budget, not the hour you spent going out to change a light bulb.

Take pride in providing the best service possible to the customers you rely on as you would have to do in any other serviced based industry, even though this is the exception where if you choose you can be a dick and unfortunately still survive!

I think many make the mistake of having the mindset that the rent their tenant pays is simply there to cover the mortgage payments on their property with the full balance left over going into their bank.

I’ve been out several times to tenants that won’t change a lightbulb or else it’s a smoke alarm battery. Drives me up the wall. They’ll make out like there’s an electrical issue so I think it’s worse than it is. I’ll get comments about the bulb being blown, err yep that’s what happens to lightbulbs...could be worse but very tiring to make time for. I’ve definitely got tenants who feel they shouldn’t pay for bulbs / batteries.

Have you considered getting a real job that isn't sponging off the rest of us? You're complaining about doing your job. It's YOUR JOB to make sure the tap screw isn't loose. Why didn't you check it before?

landlords really are the scum of society. So glad people are wising up to how entitled you guys are. Literally the only group of investors that cry when they see any dip in their profits. Lazy children.

Try to fix the issue yourself? They're taking it out your deposit. Let the landlords know about the issue? You're an annoying asshole that should fix it yourself

What the actual fuck do you people want? I paid over $3k in deposits and fees + rent to move in but god forbid I expect a working house for that. God forbid I let you know there's something wrong with the tap. I should just fix it myself, even though my lease clearly states if I do that I'm responsible for the costs.

You guys really want money every month for doing NOTHING. You are the leeches on society and I hope the worst for you all.

Landlords are such scum sucking wastes of space.

I find some of the above comments really interesting and by really interesting I mean really unimaginative. We had bought our first flat on the outskirts of London but had to move another freaking country for our jobs within the very same year. Bad luck? Yes, but the job is good. We're now tenants once again. And now we also have tenants of our own because we didn't want to immediately pay to sell the place when we only just got it!

Soooo actually being a landlord is in no way our job and we're definitely not leeches. Gosh, I wish I could afford to do "nothing" by being a landlord!

That said... story time. As short as possible: Our tenants complained not once, but twice regarding rats. Outside. OUTSIDE. Let that sink in. Rats. Living. Outside.

Before you get upset, they never once had a rat inside the flat, no. They were freaked out because they once saw one in the garden. As in, the garden outside in the "nature" of London. And this, they claimed--from the one time occurrence--was an infestation. I shit you not.

We kind of brushed this off to the agency--WHO REALLY ARE THE LEECHES OF SOCIETY LET ME TELL YOU, these assholes don't email or call you back if you're a tenant, a landlord, or the Queen--and they also didn't think it was worth us doing anything about it.

Then maybe a month later, we got a complaint again because now they could hear the rats squeeking. They thought maybe it's coming from the outside drain but they don't know because they had not SEEN any rats.

Sorry but the email we got was so dramatic and long and the agency had zero response to it other than to forward it to us. We then spent all of 5 minutes Googling this and it is in no way our responsibility to keep mother nature out of mother nature. Even the outside drainage we wouldn't be responsible for because we don't own the external (although they never actually saw any rats there either). We said it as politely as possible but... we aren't responsible for preventing rats from living where they are supposed to live.

We didn't get any more complaints after that.

I think I have just regained my sanity from reading this. Thank you!
Tenant 1 didn't bother me at all but I don't think he had ever cleaned in the 5 years he was there. Tenants 2 put a hole in the bath, covered it up with a bath mat and then notified me that the bath was leaking. Tenants 3 left me with £2.5k of cleaning and damage. I felt very hopeful about Tenant 4. So far, she has asked me how to light the oven, who her electricity supplier is, can I sort out the condensation on her windows as it is cold despite the fact she hasn't put up any curtains, can I send in an electrician to put in an extra socket as her lead won't reach and complaining that the toilet seat is loose. All things a reasonably functioning adult could resolve themselves. I'm a 50 something female and so is she. I am capable, she is a tenant. I was interested to hear your findings that this genus comes under the classification of bigus-idiotis, sub-category pain-in-the-arsus.