ChatGPT tenant complaints: what letting agents need to check

How tenants use ChatGPT to write complaints

Usually it goes like this. The tenant describes the problem in a sentence or two (“my boiler hasn’t worked for three weeks and the agent keeps saying someone will come”) and asks for a formal complaint. They may then ask for changes: firmer, longer, “include my legal rights”, “add compensation”. Some paste in your earlier emails so the letter can quote them back.

The result is a structured letter that reads as if a professional wrote it. It may name laws the tenant had never heard of until the chatbot mentioned them, and they will reasonably assume those references are right.

What ChatGPT often gets right

• A clear chronology. Dates in order, which is useful to you as well.
• The basic duties. It regularly identifies the landlord’s repairing duty in section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the duty to protect a deposit within 30 days, the right to the landlord’s name and address, and the annual gas safety check.
• Specific requests. It asks for an explanation, a date, a refund or a copy of a certificate, which gives you something concrete to answer.

A complaint that’s well organised and cites the right duty deserves a well-organised answer that accepts what’s right.

Where it tends to slip

• Numbers that aren’t in the statute. “24 hours” for heating repairs, “14 days” for everything, fixed compensation per day or per year.
• “Automatically.” Court remedies, such as the one to three times penalty for an unprotected deposit, described as if they happen without a claim.
• Old law and never-law. Section 21 notices after 1 May 2026, or the Renters (Reform) Bill, which fell in 2024 and never became law.
• Other parts of the UK. Welsh and Scottish tenancy rules used for a home in England.
• Social housing rules. Awaab’s Law timescales, which currently apply to social landlords, applied to a private let.
• Guidance presented as law. Good practice from a code or a government guide described as a statutory duty.
• Confident section numbers. A plausible section that doesn’t say what the letter claims.

We work through seven of these in detail in When an AI complaint quotes the wrong law.

Six checks before you reply

1. Find the problem underneath. Write down in plain words what happened and what the tenant wants.
2. List every claim separately. Facts, law, complaint handling, and what they’re asking for.
3. Open every provision cited. On legislation.gov.uk, not a summary: read the section itself.
4. Check where and when. Does it apply in England, and was it in force on the date of the events?
5. Check your own records against every factual claim. Reported when? Attended when? What did you say?
6. Answer the problem, not just the law. Even where the law is wrong, the boiler may still have taken too long.

If you want a quick first pass, paste the complaint into our free complaint checker. It lists the laws the complaint names, flags the ones commonly misapplied, and pulls out every sentence that states a legal rule, all in your browser.

Can you tell if a complaint was written with ChatGPT?

Not reliably. Formal structure, numbered headings and legal references are common in AI-written letters, but people write that way too, and many tenants edit what a chatbot gives them. Tools that claim to detect AI writing are not reliable enough to act on.

It also doesn’t change anything. Your obligation is to consider the complaint and answer it fairly, however it was written. What matters is whether each claim is right, and that you can check.

Should you use ChatGPT to write the reply?

It will produce a fluent reply in seconds. Before you rely on one, think about three things:

• Personal data. A complaint contains names, addresses and sometimes health information about the tenant and their household. Check the tool’s terms on keeping and reusing what you send, and whether that fits your obligations under UK GDPR, before pasting anything in. Business versions often have different terms from free consumer ones.
• The law. A chatbot answering a complaint has the same weakness as the one that wrote it: it may accept a claim that isn’t in any legislation, or add a legal statement of its own. Every legal sentence needs checking against the source.
• The decision. A chatbot will happily decide the complaint for you. It shouldn’t: whether to uphold an issue depends on your records and your judgement.

Casebriar was built for this job: it checks each legal claim against legislation.gov.uk before anything is drafted, waits for your decision on each issue, and processes complaint content only for your agency, erasing it on your schedule. Casebriar vs ChatGPT, point by point.