I live together with my girlfriend in a rental apartment from LKF - Lunds Kommuns Fastighets AB. To enter our apartment you pass two doors. The first leads into a large outdoor lounge, and the second, very robust door, leads into the actual apartment. One evening in December, I got home and found the first door wide open. The lock was broken. It looked like someone had used a screwdriver to wreak it. However, we didn’t store anything of value in the lounge, so nothing was stolen. I reported the incident to the police, and asked our landlord to replace the lock. LKF worked slowly. After 3 weeks the first guy showed up, to inspect the damage. A few days later another guy made a second inspection. After a third inspection, a fourth guy finally came and replaced the lock. It took him about an hour, and the result was not beautiful, but at least functional.

Now in April, we got an invoice for the replacement. The invoice included 3 invoices, the real onefrom the actual locksmith: 5,812 SEK, a second from a middle man charging a 500 SEK fee, 10% fee and 25% sales tax. Our landlord did not include any fee for their work. In total the invoice was at 8,696 SEK, approx 1,000 USD. We were shocked. First, because they sent us the invoice since we are not responsible for the damage. Secondly, because the cost was so high, we know that it would cost about 3,000 SEK to have such a lock replaced privately. This behaviour from our landlord can’t possibly be legal. We read the law (jk, we duckduckwent), and found: According to Swedish rental law (Jordabalken, chapter 12, paragraph 15) “A landlord is responsible to ensure that the apartment has an acceptable standard”. Apparently LKF considers working locks to be higher than “acceptable standard”. We disagree. With that motivation we contested the invoice.

Hello,

We contest invoice no 10901585 of 8696 SEK for the lock replacement after burglary attempt.

We did not cause this damage, and the crime is reported to the police. We contacted you and asked to have the lock replaced. We were informed that if we wanted the entire door replaced that would include additional costs, so we declined that offer. We were not informed and did not agree to a large fee for the replacement, and you have no lawful right to demand it.

According to Jordabalken 12.15 a landlord is responsible to ensure that the living quarters hold an acceptable standard.

After two days, we received a confused reply informing us how to contact our insurance company.

Hello,

I see that you have contested the invoice for lock replacement. I would just like to inform you to speak with your insurance company about this. If the incident is reported to the police you should include the reference number.

Have you done this?

WTF? We are not going to go through the trouble of contacting our insurance company for something LKF should pay for. Ridiculous. Also that would mean we would have to pay an excess of 1500 SEK to the insurance company. We replied within an hour:

Hi again,

You as a landlord are responsible to ensure a working perimeter protection, hence you should carry the costs.

We enclose the police report, that confirms that we did not cause the damage.

After two more days, we finally got a reply:

Hi!

We will credit the invoice.

So we finally won, after quite a lot of trouble. We wonder how many other tenants have received the same kind of invoice and just paid, unaware of their legal rights.

What I think is most disturbing here is that they didn’t say that they had done anything wrong, only that they would credit it. Do they use this scam on all 20 000 persons living in their apartments?

The history is full of examples of landlords who tried to rip their tenants off. Therefore the law is tilted in favor of the tenant’s. Also it’s written to make the tenant’s rights very clear. You can easily throw the law in your landlords face.