Revenge
When I was a student, I got rolled over so many times like this, we'd move into a hovel, pay a deposit, leave a year later and lose the deposit because there was dirt on a wall or fluff on the carpet etc etc.

Some years later, between buying houses, we opted to rent for a year, to get us out the chain and improve our purchasing power ... and yes, the landlord tried it on. Various claims for fictitous shrubbery and non-existent carpet cleaning etc.

Silly sod.

Before I had been skint and not knowledgeable enough to wage legal war. Not now. It cost me a few hundred quid in fees, and my solictor did think me slightly crazy for the lengths I wanted him to go to, but, by the end of it I got my deposit back and wasted a shitload of the landlords time in jumping through a variety of legal hoops.

I had further fun with the letting agent (a local estate agency) who had taken the landlords side in the scam. Viewing a couple of properties and telling the owners I might be interested, but only of they moved it to a different agent ... got their backs up nicely :)
(flipper is going to die in a bizarre gardenning accident, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 8:48, Reply)