Hi there. We are having trouble with the agents we rent through. We recently moved into a new place and received several account statements which had to be corrected due to errors on their part. There is an outstanding balance which we are not paying as the agreement was that the estate agent would send us the utility bill before we pay any amount for the utilities. The monthly rent has been sorted. They keep on sending us, we presume, automatic generated statements showing the amount owning but to date no utility bill has been sent to us.

They did via the owner send us an attorney's letter, breach of contract, which has been subsquently retracked as they realised the issue was on their side.

I do not want to deal with them from a lawyer perspective but we cannot see why they are stalling in sending us the utility bill which they claim is now outstanding. We suspect that there are costs from the previous tenant in this bill but cannot prove it until we get the actual bill.

Should we wait and allow them to send it through? Should we ignore the statements that show an outstanding amount? Should we send a laywers letter demanding the utility bill? At this stage the relationship between us and the renting agent is not something we wish to salvage and we have already been in contact with the owner.

Thank you so much. Pierre Fabe

Hi there,

I see that you haven't made a payment for the question, but I'm going to assist you a little. If you want to ask a follow-up question, please make the required payment, even if it is R150 or R200.

So just to confirm, they are refusing to provide you with a copy of the utility bill, but insist that you pay it?

Att. Patrick 

Please remember this is a dialog if you have follow-up questions please make the required deposit, then use the REPLY button and ask your further question. I would like to continue assisting you, but I need to concentrate on people who make deposits for their questions - they get serviced first!