Unsere about deposit charges
I moved out of a flat in mid April. We chased the deposit on the 28th of May. Our landlord pushed back saying he hadn't received the keys (estate agent's mistake, we called them and they fixed it) then we chased again on June 4th and June 17th.
We were looking into other options when the landlord finally replied today, over two months after we originally requested our deposit back.
Essentially, he wants to deduct charges for:
a) broken lightbulbs
b) broken doorbell
c) a copied key
a) its two light bulbs we didn't replace
b) the 'broken' doorbell picture he provided was just a picture of dead batteries. the doorbell has never worked because we didn't add batteries. it was a ring doorbell and none of us could be bothered to figure it out
c) and key broke and was replaced, we handed in thr broken key to the estate agents also but clearly that's been missed with everything else that went on
He wants us to pay £75 for all of this, is it worth trying to fight it? He holds our deposit directly, it's not in a deposit protection scheme, and I'm a bit scared if we come back with anything he'll just keep it longer