Recently my family and I took on a six monthly contact. One of the services we required in the property was ADSL. My wife works from home and access to the internet is a must. Without it she can't work and therefore does not get paid. When we first enquired about the property we stipulated that ADSL must be available, this was emailed to the landlord who did not say that it would not be but made it sound as if it was. In every correspondence up to signing the contract the question was asked about ADSL. Again he told us that it was but we would have to set this up ourselves.
When we moved in we found out that the ADSL service was not available. We tried every company we could to fix the matter before we decided to move out. With not wanting to go for another month without my wife being able to work we found a new apartment and broke the existing contract giving only one weeks notice. I notified the landlord and gave him our reasons for leaving (mainly no ADSL service). Now the landlord has decided to take legal action against me for breaking the contact without the 30 days notice. He says and I quote "we are not responsible for telefonicas failure to provide you with a service, and does not form part of the contract,".
What I would like to know is:-
Can he do this?
Where do I stand and how can I stop this?
Does our stipulation for a service we were made to think was available not count?
Can we claim for my wife's loss of earnings from the landlord?
I have every correspondence email saved from the original enquiry to the final
I was thinking that maybe if I did not have a leg to stand on then I could offer to give the landlord one months rent for the 30 days term of notice.
Please help… I feel I've been tricked and now paying the price.