tenant incurred bill through unauthorized heating work

[pkm594]

My tenant brought in a heating engineer without informing me. I want to pass the bill back to her because of the following:

1) she insisted on a contract with a company in our case Glow-worm.
2) even though she knew this she did not get in touch with them at all.
3) She knew about the contract becuase she was given the details and had already used them previously
4)she made no effort to get in touch with me to let me know the problem.

I want to claim against her deposit is this common place with tenants and am I right in my thinking she is liable for the cost of the visit?

thanks

[theartfullodger]

If you did not authorise the work why not simply write back to the company advising them you never authorised it & pointing them at her...

Not your bill, don't pay.. - or am I missing something...

[jjlandlord]

I don't understand why you even got a bill in your name: If tenant calls in an engineer you're not involved at all.

[Alexlandlord]

Agree fully no contractual nexus between landlord and gas engineer. Point engineer in direction of tenant whom I trust will not make same mistake again.

Like anything else, if bill was nominal and tenant otherwise ok I may be prepared to pay all or part if they were prepared to stay for say another 12 months on AST

Would other posters do same to save hassle and cost of getting new tenant in!

[mind the gap]

Would other posters do same to save hassle and cost of getting new tenant in!

I may or may not, if I knew what a 'nexus' was in this context.

[jackboy]

I have a tenant who decided to change to a prepayment meter, didn't bother to tell me, had npower out to do the work but the engineer saw a black mark above the boiler and isolated the gas in case of carbon monoxide leaking. Tenant then phoned me, I sent out my engineer who checked the system and it was fine, the black mark was just dust build up in the grease where she hadn't bothered to ever clean the walls. Thebtenant told my engineer npower were gonna come back out to reconnect her so he left it off. She then told me a big pack of lies about npower coming back out, system working fine, then 2 weeks later it broke down. I sent my engineer back out and he said boiler was still isolated inside and tenant told him npower wouldn't come back out and shed tried to turn gas back on herself but couldn't. it was turned back on at meter but not inside boiler itself. I phoned npower to check story and they said they did turn off gas initially for safety concerns but it's up to customer to check system and turn gas back on. So basically I got 2 invoices from my engineer because tenant wanted to change meter, hadn't ever cleaned the kitchen wall and then lied about npower coming back out.

I will probably pay half of the total bill and charge the tenant the rest, but would be interested on people's views? Surely if the tenant makes unauthorised changes to a perfectly adequately heating system the should be liable for osts incurred?

[theartfullodger]

Send tenant the bill (probably won't pay) & evict...

[Claymore]

It is not your bill. The contract is between the tenant and the heating company. Let the company know and, under the circumstances you stated, I would not pay it.

If you let the tenant get away with this - what next?