Here's my problem, I would appreciate any advice and thoughts anyone may have:
I've been living in Singapore for almost 5 years and have been renting my current apartment since October 2014. A couple of months ago, I received notice that my company was transferring me out of Singapore and I would have to leave in September 2014. My tenancy agreement has a standard diplomatic clause with a two-month notice period, so 9 weeks before my scheduled departure date I sent a letter to my estate agent to pass on to the landlord informing them I would be exercising the diplomatic clause and leaving my tenancy one-month early. My tenancy agreement had no listed address or contact details for the landlord and I had no contact details for the landlord's estate agent, so this was the only way I could think of to get my notice to the landlord.
My estate agent duly responded that she had passed on my letter to the landlord's estate agent, so notice had been given. But, several weeks later, I get an urgent call my from estate agent saying that the agent she had thought was the landlord's agent was not in fact, the landlord's agent. So, the landlord had never received the notice after all. We frantically got the correct estate agent a notice letter that day, but by then the damage had been done and my notice letter was 12 days late. As a result, I am now on the hook and responsible for paying for my apartment through to almost two weeks after I will be leaving and handing it back- roughly $1,700.
The landlord and the landlord's estate agent acknowledge that I did nothing wrong and I did my best to get a letter to them on time, but from their perspective they only got the letter when they did so are not willing to release me from my lease when I intended. My estate agent has said that she sent it to the incorrect estate agent, because that estate agent had misrepresented himself as the landlord's agent, when he in fact was not.
Ultimately, everyone is blaming the "rogue" estate agent who claimed he was working for the landlord when he had no standing as the landlord's agent, and to a lesser extent, my estate agent, for not understanding who was the real estate agent for the landlord. Regardless, I am being made to pay $1,700 and take responsibility for other people's mistakes.
My estate agent says we may have some grounds in that the landlord's address should have been on the original tenancy agreement and without it I had no way of directly communicating my notice to the landlord. The landlord is saying that they made it clear to my estate agent who she should have been dealing with and so they haven't done anything wrong either.
Does anyone have any tips on this? I am extremely frustrated and angry that I will have to pay out $1,700 even though I did everything I could to get my notice to the landlord.
