Tenants leaving well before 56-day legal notice period. Can I keep their deposit?

Thanks for all of the replies. I think I am going to learn a lesson and move on. At the outset of the new tenancy I told the tenants to make themselves familiar with the law when giving notice. And next time I won't hang myself the same way.

SPC100 said:

If you are looking for another opinion on the fairness of their finding, I think you would need to share actual wording of those emails.

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I have dropped enough breadcrumbs already. The emails were only about the set-up of an appointment to collect keys and inspect property. I can see why they could be read why they were by the RTB. Next time I will be more careful.

Thirsty said:

As I believe I said back in September, who needs the hassle?

Too many hours wasted, too much emotional investment for two weeks of a deposit.

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It wasn't that much hassle and no emotions were involved, on my side anyway. I had to send some evidence and explain myself in writing to the RTB. I don't think I wasted my time on this.

SPC100 said:

I would be less likely to rent from a landlord who has a rtb finding against them.

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I thought about this and am not really concerned. If a future tenant finds it off-putting then it's not a tenant I want. The RTB hasn't ordered damages which it seems to do when landlords really act the maggot.

Other posters were correct.

My God, a landlord going to the RTB seems to be like a Christian heading to the Colosseum.

What a perverse interpretation of the situation.

I remember being in Court years ago and our expert witnesses had a particular basis for analysing something. A witness for the other side had a different basis which our guys viewed as fundamentally flawed. But in Court they said, “look, we’ve tried using it anyway and it doesn’t come to that conclusion either”. The judge then said in his judgement that by using the flawed methodology at all, they validated it, and therefore that argument about it being fundamentally flawed fell away. It was an affront to commonsense.

Systems are sometimes Very frustrating. Hopefully most of the time the outcomes are mostly ok

I think what is frustrating is a system that is unfair to start with and RTB is a very loaded dice