Mystery of the missing landlord (England) Potentially a scam situation
We rent from a private landlord (no agency). He’s always been very hands off, and because we have a big dog and don’t want to risk a Section 21, we’ve generally kept our heads down and only contacted him when absolutely necessary.
Last month, we got a text from a woman claiming to be his partner. She had all our details correct and said our landlord was “unavailable” due to a family emergency. She asked whether we’d paid rent since January. We told her yes, and that was the end of it. I said to my partner at the time that it felt dodgy, so we tried calling and whatsapping our landlord, nothing went through.
Yesterday she messaged again (screenshots attached). She gave us new bank details with our landlord’s name on the account and told us to start paying rent there. We told her absolutely not without written confirmation from our landlord directly. We told her we wanted to talk to his Dad as we have met him on two previous occasions and we know they work together. She then said his dad might be away dealing with the family emergency, and offered to bring his mum, who we’ve never met and apparently doesn’t speak English. Today she’s now saying she’ll come on Saturday evening with both parents.
We’ve only ever met his dad twice. We’ve never met his mum. The whole thing feels off.
We moved in almost exactly a year ago, and the lack of contact from our landlord hasn’t been unusual.
What on earth should we do?
The only explanation I can think of is that he’s in prison or something equally dramatic, but we obviously don’t know. We just don’t want to get scammed or accidentally breach our tenancy.