Reporting damage – tenant portal or emergency?
Choose the reporting route according to urgency. An ordinary repair, urgent building damage and immediate danger require different responses.
1. Immediate danger
Emergency services
For fire, a medical emergency or immediate danger to people, call 112. For an immediate police emergency, call 110. Do not put yourself at risk to take photographs or attempt a repair.
2. Urgent technical damage
For a burst pipe, major water leak, dangerous electrical fault, safety-critical door damage or a comparable urgent building problem, use the current on-call or contractor contact displayed locally. The number differs between residences.
If it is safe, limit damage with a simple action such as closing a known water tap. Do not open electrical, heating or water systems, and do not attempt a technical repair yourself.
Framework contract & costs
Specialists named on the emergency notice work under an individual or framework contract; calling them is not in itself “free”. For a genuine technical emergency within the landlord’s responsibility, the landlord bears the call-out costs. There is no blanket promise for a false alarm, non-urgent call-out or damage you caused yourself.
3. Ordinary damage or a fault
Report ordinary repairs through Studierendenwerk Hamburg’s tenant portal. This gives residence management a documented case, allows it to inspect the damage on site and, where necessary, coordinate a specialist.
Typical cases include a dripping tap, faulty light, radiator problem with no immediate danger, damaged furniture or a defect in a communal room.
A ticket instead of a separate email
The portal creates a documented case. You can view its status and add later information to the same ticket. A direct email to residence management can be overlooked more easily in a busy inbox and does not offer the same status tracking. For ordinary damage, use the portal wherever possible unless you have been given another binding route.
Follow the report instead of duplicating it
- Note the ticket or case number.
- Reply to questions within the existing case.
- Add new information or deterioration there.
- Do not create several identical tickets; if the urgency genuinely changes, also use the appropriate urgent route.
These details help
- residence, building and exact location,
- brief description and urgency,
- how long the problem has existed and whether it has changed,
- photograph or video where useful and safe,
- appliance or machine number, if available.