I moved into the property of a friend of a friend in September and I hoped that since I had known the guy for over 10 years he would be alright. Turns out he is the scummiest landlord I've ever had.

When I moved in the upstairs toilet was broken and so were most of the light fittings in the rooms. The internet connection was really bad and I also wasn't even given a set of my own keys. The landlord very hesitantly "lent" me "his" keys and said he needs them back. Before I moved in there was also an agreement that the landlord would purchase a desk for my room and to date this hasn't happened. I actually made the desk purchase a condition of moving in as I'm a student and need somewhere to study if I'm at home. The landlord is also to date keeping his personal belongings in my bedroom and won't move them and tells me I'm not allowed to leave them in communal areas.

First off, the landlord wanted to get his own set of keys cut for the first couple of weeks and kept arranging to come round to collect the keys, cut them and return. He never actually shown up then went silent so I got the keys cut and attempted to invoice him. He decided he no longer wanted the keys and to this day refuses to pay. He collected the keys he no longer needed today.

When I asked about a desk he kept saying "tomorrow we can go to Ikea" a good 3-4 times. Then it turned into "just send a link to the desk you want and I'll buy it". He never bought it. I've given up.

Our landlord asked us to "be sensible with our energy usage" because we each pay him an agreed rate of £50 month on top of our rent for bills and he said our usage is too high. He monitors our day to day usage via an app on his phone. Originally, we didn't have 24hr access to hot water and I assumed it was to do with a boiler but it was actually a setting he'd enabled on thermostat to turn off the hot water. I then turned it back on and he told us not to. I told him I'll keep it on anyway and I'll contact an ombudsman if he's not happy about it. We offered to pay bills separately if we're underpaying but he refuses to allow that and insists we pay a flat rate and also to minimise our usage.

The toilet was broken for at least a month prior to me moving in and despite continually prodding him it was only fixed yesterday. He kept saying he was waiting to hear back from "his guy". Excuses ranged from "his guy" being in Spain so we need to wait until he finishes his holiday, or "his guy" is spending time with his family so out of politeness our landlord didn't want to contact him. When we offered to arrange for our own plumber and whatnot the landlord said that he won't pay for a different one and we'll have to wait. It was only because last Wednesday I threatened to complain to the civil advice bureau that magically he did something and fixed everything.

Today he came over and removed the router. It turns out that the router that was installed in our house didn't belong to him but he "borrowed it from work". He replaced it with a 4G portable router thing that has a maximum of around 8mbp/s download speed between three people. I'm currently using the 4G hotspot on my phone so that my housemate can watch netflix. Our third housemate is out and works from home normally and also requires a VPN to do so. I don't think she will be able to work from home moving forward.

There's no contract btw. He also keeps referring to my housemates room as "his room" since he used to stay there. He considers us temporary guests instead of tenants and treats this whole arrangement as if he's doing us a favour in our time of need (you know, needing a fucking place to live) instead of treating it as a business which he owns.