Landlords called out for tenant ’emergencies’ from lightbulbs to leaks

I do maintenance for a letting agent. Lady called to say her washing machine stopped working.

Went round, turned out she had accidently turned off the spur switch on the wall . . . which was labelled WASHING MACHINE!

Reply to the comment left by Billy Gunn at 25/07/2025 – 04:37
No matter how detailed the referencing, you can never account for stupidity…

Last December, my tenant (a qualified Electrical and Mechanical Engineer) called me to get an electrician ASAP to fix a national power cut. The outage was all over the news. I told him to go outside and look at the neighbours’ houses because they also had no power. He also messaged me at midnight on Christmas Eve
He has now left.

I was called by a tenant, who told me there was a “wiring problem in the kitchen”
I went round to the house, and saw two out of the six recessed ceiling lights were not working.
I asked him “did both lights go out at once”, he said “no, one failed, and then a month later another one failed”.
I replaced the two light bulbs. “wiring problem” solved!

I got called out to an urgent blocked sink as they had to have food before going to work and was halfway through making it (4pm). The sink strainer was blocked with the vegetable peelings they had just put in there. I was not a happy bunny.

Because of where my properties are situated I tend to get foreign tennants that have not lived in UK before. There is always a problem with rice. I dont know how many times I have been called upon with a blocked kitchen sink and its been rice. I have tried to stop the problem by poviding collecting sink plugs etc and explaining when showing them around on entering the property about not putting rice down the sink plughole but always happens. Luckily up to now the blockages have been ok to clear. But its annoying.

Reply to the comment left by Billy Gunn at 25/07/2025 – 04:37
Yep, I’ve had the same. Switches turned off which are clearly marked ‘washing machine do not switch off’. I’ve been called out multiple times for a dishwasher blocked filter, they seemed to think you can put plates with leftovers straight in the dishwasher.
I’ve even had an 18 year old student tenant not know how to work a kettle!

I was called out because a tenant complained about black mould on the skirting boards, it was actually a build up of dust. I cleaned the skirting boards and left.

I also got called out for a broken fridge. When he phoned I asked him to check that he hadn’t accidentally turned off the isolator switch , which he said he’d done. When I got there the isolator switch was turned off.

I’ve remembered another one. A tenant complained that the shelves in the fridge weren’t wide enough and kept moving. I explained that fridges are designed this way, there needs to be some leeway to get the shelves out because you can’t always fully open a fridge door, so the door ends up in the way when trying to get the shelves out to clean. He wouldn’t accept this, so i bought some safety glass to fit how he wanted. I dropped off the glass for him. I then got a call saying that he couldn’t get the new shelves in because the fridge door was in the way 🤦‍♀️. He was a particularly whinging tenant, luckily he didn’t stay long.

Reply to the comment left by David100 at 25/07/2025 – 10:55
Why would you replace light bulbs that’s their responsibility