I would appreciate any advise given.
I moved out of a rented flat last week and the letting agent had just returned my deposit, but its £35 short!
I split a drink on the bedroom carpet and carpetright agreed to replace the carpet for £126.09.
Before carpetright measured it up etc, belvoir (letting agent) sent a carpet cleaner round to see if he felt the stain could be removed! He was there 5 mins and said that it would have to be replaced!
When i emailed the letting agent last week to confirm what balance was to be paid to me, he replied "all is fine apart from the £96.09 new carpet and £30 fitting costs!
Yesterday i received a cheque for £463.91p, which was described as £625 deposit less £126.09 carpet replacement less £35 carpet cleaning attempt.
I was never advised that i would be charged for the carpet cleaner and it was not disclosed that £35 would be deducted from my deposit!

Can i do anything about this as i feel they have broken our tenancy agreement!

Thanks

Typical life of a carpet is 5 years.

Age of carpet - minimum 6 months (0.5 year) - check this, they should have a receipt for when it was last replaced.

Cost of replacement - 126.09

Cost owed by tenant is the current value of the carpet = 126.09 - (126.09*(0.5/5)) = 113.48 pounds

They can not replace an old carpet with a new one and charge the tenant for the upgrade.

Find out the actual age of the carpet and plug in the values

The 35 pounds is probably fair.

The point is bein missed here!
The £35 was not pre-warned as coming out my deposit and i thought they had to advise you of what deductions were to be made before they can deduct them!
I wass never once advised that there would be a cost associated to the carpet cleaners inspection!

The carpet was new as it is a new build, so i knew id be footing the bill for any cost of replacement!
But its the fact that i have also been deducted the £35 without my knowledge that i am disbuting!

I need some advice on this as i have read my contract and this seems very wrong!

You probably have a case but unfortunately disputes over deposits can be very difficult. I believe they should have given you an itemised list of work to be done, and bill you accordingly. In practice they can pretty much make it up. You could go to the small claims court but my advice is to put this down to life experience.

Was an inventory done when you moved in? Did you sign it?

Did you get receipts for every last penny?

They attempted to minimise the losses by cleaning the carpet. This is what they are obliged to do. The costs of this should not be born by the landlord. He should have the property returned to him in the same condition as at the start of the tenancy. He should use the minimum cost method to return it to this condition when you surrender the property. He attempted this, but because of the nature of the stain, and the fact you did not clean the stain when it was first formed has resulted in the need to replace the carpet. I would take this one on the chin and learn from it - have some carpet cleaner in the house and spot clean any stains the moment you see them.

I also have had a bad experience with a Belvoir franchise in Bishops Stortford run by this chap before he sold up and moved into the http://www.quickcashforproperty.co.uk/ line of work.

I was deducted for a stain on the carpet and rip in the lino, I put the stain down to wear and tear and the rip in the lino was inevitable because there there rips elsewhere already and quite frankly it was disintegrating.

Anyway I had these deductions from my deposit so waited 6months then I just raised a claim on MoneyClaim.gov.uk and the landlord settled out of court. Thing is they left it too late in teh court process so they would have had an entry made on their credit report as well.

If more people took landlords to court, then they will find it harder to get credit in future if they end up losing their court cases and this will make them think twice about spurious claims to make deductions from deposits. Obviously the new 2004 housing act helps safeguard deposits no end as well.

Depending on the size of the stain and whether its been spot treated and cleaned I would put it down to wear and tear but without more details from you like size of stain, type of carpet and colour and what caused the stain its difficult to form an opinion on wear and tear or not.

The fact the landlord is charging you for carpet replacement sounds like betterment and they are not allowed to do that anyway so you might have a case to recover some of the deposit back from your landlord or not.