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Me and my girlfriend lived in a rented house from April 2010 until July 2011 through a letting agency called 'Inspire Living'. My girlfriends grandmother agreed to be our guarantor, as we knew that we would be able to pay the rent with no problems.
Since we moved in, repairs that desperately needed doing were put off and delayed by the letting agent using stalling tactics such as re-requesting a list of repairs, claiming our emails were going into their junk mail folder (yet still managing to reply to them), staff being ill etc.
After six months of emailing and calling to attempt to get the repairs done, and suffering indoor temperatures of below 10 degrees C, I managed to speak to them and we both agreed that the rent would be lowered from £725 to £600 until the repairs had been made and our living conditions improved.
They never disputed this rent decrease and returned our deposit when we moved out at the end of July. We had since had no contact from them either by phone, post or email (all methods of contact which they had for us).
Recently, our 80 year old guarantor has received two final demand letters from NG Collections spaced two days apart, demanding £1877.9 for rent arrears from January to December of 2011. Since we only lived there in 2011 from January to July, this seems odd to me. As far as I am concerned, we have paid everything that we agreed to and owe them nothing.
I tried to phone the letting agency 'Inspire Living' several times over a period of a few days. I also tried to phone the mobile number on the DCA letter several times. Both were either not answering or going to answer phone on every occasion. I searched the internet for NG collections and found nothing, so assumed it was a scam.
They have since sent our guarantor a 'Formal Notice of Petition for Bankruptcy' which we now have 7 days left on to try to get it set aside (she has since sent this on to us). In the 'Particulars of Debt' section, it gives very vague information and also outright lies. Some of which include them saying that we agreed to pay the debt on numerous occasions, despite having absolutely no contact with us since we moved out.
It might also be worth mentioning that Inspire living also never gave us any proof of our deposit going into one of the approved protection schemes.
Please can anybody advise how to proceed, what exactly I should tell the county court in my application to have it set aside? Is there somebody I can contact who will investigate the company as they seem extremely dodgy?
Thank you all so much, I'm at the end of my rope here...
Since we moved in, repairs that desperately needed doing were put off and delayed by the letting agent using stalling tactics such as re-requesting a list of repairs, claiming our emails were going into their junk mail folder (yet still managing to reply to them), staff being ill etc.
After six months of emailing and calling to attempt to get the repairs done, and suffering indoor temperatures of below 10 degrees C, I managed to speak to them and we both agreed that the rent would be lowered from £725 to £600 until the repairs had been made and our living conditions improved.
They never disputed this rent decrease and returned our deposit when we moved out at the end of July. We had since had no contact from them either by phone, post or email (all methods of contact which they had for us).
Recently, our 80 year old guarantor has received two final demand letters from NG Collections spaced two days apart, demanding £1877.9 for rent arrears from January to December of 2011. Since we only lived there in 2011 from January to July, this seems odd to me. As far as I am concerned, we have paid everything that we agreed to and owe them nothing.
I tried to phone the letting agency 'Inspire Living' several times over a period of a few days. I also tried to phone the mobile number on the DCA letter several times. Both were either not answering or going to answer phone on every occasion. I searched the internet for NG collections and found nothing, so assumed it was a scam.
They have since sent our guarantor a 'Formal Notice of Petition for Bankruptcy' which we now have 7 days left on to try to get it set aside (she has since sent this on to us). In the 'Particulars of Debt' section, it gives very vague information and also outright lies. Some of which include them saying that we agreed to pay the debt on numerous occasions, despite having absolutely no contact with us since we moved out.
It might also be worth mentioning that Inspire living also never gave us any proof of our deposit going into one of the approved protection schemes.
Please can anybody advise how to proceed, what exactly I should tell the county court in my application to have it set aside? Is there somebody I can contact who will investigate the company as they seem extremely dodgy?
Thank you all so much, I'm at the end of my rope here...
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