PeterSDE

I think the issue here is the deliberately misleading information on the mydeposits website. The site gives the strong impression that the landlord is protected, even if the agent goes bust: which of course encourages the ll to leave the money with the agent, thinking the scheme protects him. Mydeposits have an extremely clear brochure which states very specifically that the LL is NOT protected if the agent goes bust. Guess what! this brochure is NOT on the website. Guess what! Mydeposits only send this to the LL AFTER the agent has gone bust.

Dear everyone I am still pursuing this matter. Here is what I think is the case, after considerable investigation: 1. MyDeposits indeed does NOT protect the landlord in the event that the agent goes insolvent. If that happens, the agent runs off with the deposit, MyDeposits says: too bad, landlord. You are liable, you pay up 2. The information about this on the MyDeposits website is, to put it politely, less than clear. In fact, the MyDeposits website gives a very strong impression that the landlord IS protected if the agent goes insolvent. 3. However: myDeposits DOES have a brochure ''Information for landlords using an agent to protect deposits' which does make it very clear that landlords are responsible. This brochure is NOT available on the website. It is ONLY sent to landlords AFTER the agent has defaulted. 4. One may ask: why does not myDeposits put a clear warning on their site to landlords using agents? why do they not put this brochure on the site? One could be cynical: they are doing this because they know that if landlords realize this, they will pull their (valueless) insurance out of myDeposits and make some other arrangement. My, that would be cynical. 5. Just to make matters more interesting. MyDeposits is part owned by the National Landlords Association. Is it not a bit surprising to have a Landlords association part-owning a deposit scheme which so acts against landlords' interests? Neither MyDeposits for the NLA have answered any of my letters on this matter. Further action beckons. I would be VERY interested in hearing from other landlords who have similarly suffered from myDeposits. Peter

Thanks Planner. Yes, I have looked at this and it certainly gives the impression that it is the agent they will come after for the deposit. But the person I spoke to at MyDeposits was quite adamant: as the agent is not available, they will come after me, end of story. I put forward the obvious arguments, as outlined elsewhere. I see too that the other agency which insures tenancy deposits (the tenancy deposit scheme, at http://www.thedisputeservice.co.uk/) makes very clear that in the situation I am in, they will pursue the agent, not the landlord, for the money. I am writing to MyDeposits about this, and I'll be taking legal advice too (and will try and share the cost with other LLs in this position, wiht this agent).

Alas.. MyDeposits do NOT see it this way. Their view is that the landlord is responsible, even though the LL never saw the money, and even though the agent did insure the deposit with their scheme. This is the opposite of what Fiona McNulty says in her Evening Standard advice, and also seems to me entirely inequitable. Among other matters, there is nothing on the MyDeposits site spelling out that in the event of an agent not holding the money in a ring-fenced scheme and then going bankrupt, then the LL is (in their view) responsible. Just as a further complication: we are aware that for one of our properties, our contract with the tenant (arranged by the agent) specifies a deposit of £300. But we understand from the tenant that he actually paid the agent a much bigger deposit (all of £2500 indeed). So what happens then? if the agent registered the full £2500, is the LL responsible for all this, despite the contract specifying a much smaller amount? To add to the fun: MyDeposits say they cannot tell me how much the deposits registered with them for properties for which I am the LL are for (they will only tell the agent, who of course no longer exists). So it appears that I cannot even find out how much I might be liable for! Another point. MyDeposits are a for-profit company. It appears they carry the insurance risk themselves: that is, they do not lay off the risk on other insurers. The practical effect of this is that every pound less MyDeposits has to pay out is a pound more profit for themselves: so if they can get me to pay up the full deposits rather than have to accept a reduced amount from the administrators, then more profit for them. I think this is going to run. The property company involved represented numerous LLs, many (if not all) of them in the same position as me -- theoretically liable for all the deposits. I can see that on this site that LLs are not very popular -- in this case at least, LLs and tenants have a common interest, against agents who steal and insurance companies that don't honour their commitments.

Thank you, that is very helpful. I will see if MyDeposits sees it this way!!!!

Thanks Planner. In fact, the agent DID register the deposit with Mydeposits, and Mydeposits have confirmed this, so at least that is covered, and that does mean that I am not liable to the 3x compensation (so the other answers on this thread that focus on the matter of 3x compensation are irrelevant -- it was protected). I did indeed ring Mydeposits, and the initial take of the guy I spoke to on the phone was: yep, you are registered. Yep, you never got the money because the agent p*ssed it against the wall. Yep, the registration includes insurance. But nope, the insurance does not cover the event of the agent a. not following Mydeposits own declared rules and not putting it into a ringfenced account b. running off with the money then going bankrupt. So we are going to come after you for the money, even though you never had it. I now know a good deal more about the whole matter and the legal framework than I did when I spoke to this person. And I posted this query because I wanted to hear of anyone else's experiences: there must be quite a few LLs in the same situation as me, these days of collapsing agency companies. And I do wonder quite what the 'insurance' insures for, if not for the possibility of agency malfeasance. You could argue that Mydeposits had a responsibility to ensure that agent members actually followed the rules that Mydesposits itself establishes; and coming after me for the money when the agent did not follow those rules is somewhat unfair. So a very particular question: has anyone dealt with Mydeposits (or other TDS agencies) with such a matter?

I have two properties which I rented out on a 'let-only' contract through an agent: the agent found the tenants, took the deposits and the first months rents, then handed the tenancies over to me to run. I knew of the tenancy deposit scheme: the agent told me he would take and hold the deposits and register them with www.mydeposits.co.uk, which he duly did (and charged me for it, by the way). I never received the deposit. According to the TDS, the agent was obliged to hold the deposits in a ring-fenced account. However -- you can guess what happened. The agent never appears to have set up any such account, hit hard times, and it seems started using money from whereever he could get it to try and stay afloat (in fact, it appears he was actually not passing on rent monies received to the landlords). So now the agent is in administration, and there appears to be no money in the agent's accounts to pay out the deposits. The rentals will finish in the next months and the tenants will expect to get their money back. So here is the question: what is going to happen now? It appears that because the agent did register the deposits with the mydeposits insurance scheme, the tenants will be paid back. However, a phone conversation with mydeposits today suggested that I, the landlord, might be liable for the disappeared money -- and that mydeposits would come after me for the money, even though I never ever received any of it. The mydeposits documentation is full of warnings to agents, that they must set up proper accounts to hold the money, but does not say what happens if the agents do not do this. Does anyone have any experience of similar situations?