Anyway, Gethin, the selfish good-for-nothing, wouldn’t even get us the Deposit repayment code and they wouldn't pay us without it. Obstacles were put up everywhere. Why couldn’t we tell the Deposit Protection Service the facts and then they could ring and check with him and pay us the money? Instead, the rule was that if the tenant does a runner and won’t contact the deposit scheme to release the deposit that we have to get a solicitor to vouch for us… they say a lawyer will do this for a fee of £5.
In fact, we'd already asked our conveyancer (through whom we'd bought all our houses several years earlier) to sign these forms loads of time (for free – because she doesn’t ‘do’ £5). Since we weren't buying any more houses and she hadn't made a penny out of us for some time she had started to pull faces when we asked for yet another favour, so we felt we couldn’t ask again. We didn't know any other lawyers and when I popped into a lawyer's office on the high street, the admin assistant unsurprisingly said that the lawyer would not sign anything for £5. People often say 'talk to your lawyer' or we'd had tenants say 'we want to speak to your lawyer and not you.' Where does this idea come from that everyone has a lawyer? Who does unless they're always in trouble with the law?
Also (while I'm going off on one), how does a lawyer signing that they can vouch for us prove we are owed the money? It’s completely illogical. I felt like demanding that the DPS give us a list of the lawyers who work for this pittance and we’d beat a path to their door.
We in fact had to wait several years before we got the couple of hundred pounds back. Adrian renewed his friendship with an old school pal, via Facebook, and it turned out he was a high-flying lawyer. Adrian could now take his old pal for lunch and he would sign the necessary paperwork when tenants had done runners, to enable us to finally get the deposits.
Anyway, back to Adrian's idea of visiting Gethin in his workplace: I advised against.
'Mmm. Considering he's a body-builder, he might punch your lights out,' I suggested.
So we waited until he'd moved out. Adrian then went to the house and found a letter from ‘Orange’ showing he owed over a thousand pounds and threatening him with legal action; it’s a way of life for some. And in response to the bleeding hearts who would side with the Gethins of this life, how can one justify using a mobile ‘phone excessively instead of paying to keep a roof over your head?
Later on and in response to several texts from Adrian, Gethin texted to say he'd changed his job and was no longer working at the garage, so there was no point going to see him there and also could we do him a favour and not ring him at his (old) workplace?
'I don't want my employers knowing my business,' he said, meaning that he didn't want them to know he was a defaulting tenant who didn't pay his way in life. But he wasn't so scared of their disapproval that he would actually put his hand in his pocket. With these debtors it had to reach the ‘terrified’ point on the scale for them to actually hand any money over (and since we don't employ heavies, we couldn't instil terror in anyone). It was also a lie about him having changed jobs, as Adrian saw him lounging about outside the garage one day when he drove past.