Some context:
I'm in a house share with two other people (friend and his brother). We just moved in about two weeks ago. Our front door was working, however, it got stuck once but I was able to unlock it from the other side. A couple days after that, it's unmovable. As of now, we walk around to the side door which is about 1 meter to the right.
Upon inspection, the lock is kind of bent out of shape (photos here) ever so slightly. I don't think any of us three broke/damaged it and I reckon it probably gave way due to damage beforehand. I didn't take any photos of the lock during the entry inspection because I was looking at walls, etc. And to be honest, I wouldn't have seen that as a big deal if I had inspected it beforehand.
I did some Googling around and I can't seem to see our situation. People talk about how it's the landlord's responsibility because if the lock is broken, a thief could come in and steal everything. However, in this instance, the door is jammed shut so a thief won't be sliding that bad boy open any time soon.
Ideally, I'd like the landlord to pay for it, but if I have to, then we should. My housemate (friend) doesn't want to deal with it and just lives with the workaround which to me seems kind of stupid. To be quite honest, I think he thinks I did it since he said "Well I didn't do it, so why should I pay?".
I really think it's ridiculous to live like that long term because it needs to be fixed eventually so why not do it now?
Right now, the question is, "is the landlord obliged to pay for the lock fix or us tenants?"
Thanks for your help everyone!
That doesn't look like wear and tear to me. Looks like someone got too forceful with it.
If it wasn't picked up before, I'd say it's the tenant's responsibility.
It wouldn't be too expensive to get a replacement from bunnings.