Who should apportion blame on Check-Outs? Inventories Everywhere provides their views

As everyone knows, the Inventory Industry is not regulated, given this, throughout the country there are Inventory providers producing reports to varying different standards, with some choosing to make the decision to apportion blame in their Check-Outs and others choosing not to.  Kate Campbell-Balcombe, looks to explain exactly why Inventories Everywhere does not apportion blame on their Check-Outs.

I realise that the Inventory Industry itself is fairly split on their views as to whether Clerks should or shouldn’t apportion blame.  Those for it, feel that with their skills and experience they are best placed to make assessments of fair wear and tear.  I am definitely not saying that what other providers do is incorrect and am not casting aspersions on their practices, however, for us at Inventories Everywhere, we follow the principal that our Clerks are there to gather impartial data at a Check-Out and for them to remain objective, we believe that they must simply state what they see with enough detail and information so that all the relevant parties may be able to apportion blame with ease, if this should be the case.

Taking the impartially aside, another reason why we believe that our Inventory Clerks should not apportion blame is that the Clerks themselves do not know the full picture of what has happened during the life of the tenancy and we would be uncomfortable with our clerks making a decision about anything without knowing all the facts first.  The Clients could of course advise us beforehand, and we are always very grateful to receive such information, but in practice and from experience, this rarely happens,  For the most part, our Clients actually demand that our Clerks do not apportion blame for this very reason, as they don’t want to be faced with the additional problem of calming a tenant down because what they are reading in black and white on a Check-Out Report doesn’t show the full story and furthermore having to explain to a Landlord that part of the Report should in affect be disregarded – the Clients that use our services say that the way we produce our Reports actually makes it easier for them to undertake a deposit return, and for us, that’s simply feedback that we could never ignore.

For more information about Inventories Everywhere, please email Kate directly, kate@inventorieseverywhere.co.uk or why not join them on Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter. 

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