Watchdog student house
Having been a holiday rep and a student I have a lot of nasty stories. In my second year of uni I moved into a house with a few other people from halls. Those of us who had to work and had no where to go for the summer had the joy of trying to make the place into something more than a grotty cackhouse.

I decided to go for the kitchen, which was in the basement. Taking a pan out of one box I swear 300 flies jumped out at me, I immediately vacated said basement and refused to return. My housemate Rich was dubious and called exaggeration until the same thing happened to him and he had to apologise and take me to see a bush baby (I run a tight ship). We discovered that the previous tenants, incapable of lugging bin bags upstairs, had spent the year cramming full bags of kitchen waste into a spare room at the back of the kitchen. Now I don’t like living in grossiosity but I refuse to touch someone elses year old mouldy crap. Hence we spent our first four months as ‘adults’ learning the important lessons that 1. landlords are shite and 2. flea spray is shite.

Over the year the house gradually crumbled to pieces. In the final week of our year there the second bathroom of our 6 bed 2 bath house was finally installed, covering the place with soot and grubble. Just after we’d scrubbed the house to death in order to retain our deposits.

A few weeks later we all had calls from our parents (guarantors), all ready to give us a bollocking, and wanting to know why they’d just received letters from our landlords saying that they were liable for the £3500 we owed them.

So despite having spent the year making the house a lot better than it had been originally, they’d charged us not only to clear the mess they made whilst installing the bathroom, but for the actually installation of the bathroom its self. The bathroom which we’d already been covering in our rent for 12 months. On top of this we were subject to various ridiculous charges such as £7 per lightbulb (there'd been none when we'd moved in) and £50 to shift some videos that'd been left in one of the rooms.

Quelle surprise a year later when we see Leeds Student Homes on Watchdog charged with taking £250000 from students. They were in the paper again last week under their new name and 'new management' after getting charged £15000 for fucking about with fire alarms.
(babyaeroplanes, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 10:19, Reply)