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So I've had it with my landlady. Most of the shit she's done wasn't done to me personally however my aunt and uncle (my housemates) are also at the end of their rope with her. To begin, my landlady who we'll call Brenda for simplicity (not her real name don't worry) is a long time friend of my grandmother's. Brenda was having a hard time finding tenets, my newly married aunt and uncle needed an apartment, both problems solved each other.
When my aunt and uncle moved in Brenda failed to do a walk through with the previous tenets. My aunt and uncle cleaned their own apartment before moving into the upper story of the duplex, while the old tenets moved down stairs. Fine, whatever, they're too happy to have a place to worry about the fact that its a mess before they move in.
The old tenets move out for good, and the real shit with Brenda starts. My aunt and uncle move downstairs, since its a bigger apartment and my aunt is 8 months pregnant at this time and they're preparing for the baby. Again Brenda fails to do a walk through, and even though there is damage caused by the previous tenet's cat as well as unapproved "improvements" done, they get their deposit back. So now for the second time my aunt and uncle have to act as cleaning crew before their new apartment is livable, as well as clean the apartment upstairs. Even though Brenda didn't do a walk through with them either, they were nice and cleaned it a hell of a lot more thoroughly than the previous tenets did.
Brenda decides that for $50 a month my aunt and uncle are going to be the caretakers of the property and writes this into their lease. Without giving my aunt and uncle time to research how much a caretaker normally receives. (Turns out to be 25-50% off the rent. Not 25- $50. ) Brenda doesn't give them an opportunity to turn down this clause. This means keeping the entire house, their apartment, the upstairs apartment (for as long as it is unoccupied), the stairs, basement and attic clean. This also means doing all the yard work as well as snow removal. you can't get a weekly yard service for $50 a week, let alone $50 a month. But whatever, they do it, until Brenda decides that they also need to pay for things like a lawnmower that works as well as all the gas for it. That they need to paint the upstairs apartment (of course paying for the paint that she picks out). As well as doing extensive landscaping work.
Why do they need to paint and do landscaping you ask? Brenda is moving in upstairs. She failed to find a new tenet and decided to just move in herself and sell her other house. So her new apartment needs to be re-cleaned (since it isn't clean enough), painted (since she hates the color the tenet before my aunt and uncle painted it), and get this, re carpeted. All at my aunt and uncle's expense since they're the caretakers. And Brenda had decided all these things must be done in a week to make the apartment livable for her.
They said no. They told her they would just pay the extra $50 a month since the compensation was not worth the work they were putting in. Brenda was livid. She decided that after the 4th of July my aunt and uncle would no longer be able to use the washer and dryer on site, since her original posting only said washer and dryer hook-up, not washer and dryer. She gave that up when she found out grandma had saved her original advert and it did in fact say washer and dryer, not simply hook-up.
Brenda has decided that she wants the blinds from our apartment for hers. The apartment came with the blinds and as such she decrees they're her property and we need to hand them over. We pointed out that they were in the apartment when we got it, thus implying they came with the rental. She fought tooth and nail until her boyfriend was caught TWICE peeping in my window! This creepy old guy that stays with her most of the week but doesn't 'live' here was staring in my windows!! He's lucky he didn't get a dagger through the eye! But I digress. Brenda decided to let us keep the blinds when I mentioned my three lawyer friends who all think of me as a daughter and were all rather ticked at her boyfriend's behavior.
When Brenda moved in she put her name on the wrong mailbox. This is a little thing to be sure, but she'd removed my aunt and uncle's name to do it. This means the mailman had assumed we'd moved without leaving a forwarding address, resulting in our mail getting shut off. So we didn't get things like oh I don't know, the phone bill, the gas bill, the water bill. Things that kept getting shut off without explanation since the bill companies were saying they'd sent a bill, and we'd never gotten one. We finally got it figured out when we cornered our mailman the one day. Brenda is refusing to pay the late fees/reactivation fees for bills that would have been paid on time had we gotten the bill. Though it was by no fault of ours that we did not. We'd told her the day she'd mislabeled the mailbox as hers that she'd screwed up and she told us it wouldn't matter, that our mail would just be put in the other, unlabeled, mailbox. Apparently not.
This brings us to our most recent issue with Brenda. The Fleas. Now I mentioned in a previous thread that our apartment had fleas and we had no idea where they came from. Brenda has a dog. The previous tenets had a cat. Either one is a possible source, since flea larvae can hibernate for up to 200 days. This puts it in the realm of Brenda's responsibility, and not our fault. We talked to Brenda. We showed her my legs (which look like I have the plague). Her response was that we had to deal with it on our dime since, and I quote: "Well, my dog doesn't have fleas, has never had fleas, so this isn't my fault."
The bug bombs we used are coming off our rent since we pointed out that we had no animal that goes outside that isn't bathed right after and thoroughly looked over before coming in the house. Hedgehogs are prone to mites and I'm a bit paranoid that Winston is going to contract them. We also pointed out that even if it was the previous tenet and not her dog that it is still her responsibility as the homeowner since the damages were not caused by us.
This is but a sampling of the tales I've got of the Landlady of Useless. But I have to leave for work now.
When my aunt and uncle moved in Brenda failed to do a walk through with the previous tenets. My aunt and uncle cleaned their own apartment before moving into the upper story of the duplex, while the old tenets moved down stairs. Fine, whatever, they're too happy to have a place to worry about the fact that its a mess before they move in.
The old tenets move out for good, and the real shit with Brenda starts. My aunt and uncle move downstairs, since its a bigger apartment and my aunt is 8 months pregnant at this time and they're preparing for the baby. Again Brenda fails to do a walk through, and even though there is damage caused by the previous tenet's cat as well as unapproved "improvements" done, they get their deposit back. So now for the second time my aunt and uncle have to act as cleaning crew before their new apartment is livable, as well as clean the apartment upstairs. Even though Brenda didn't do a walk through with them either, they were nice and cleaned it a hell of a lot more thoroughly than the previous tenets did.
Brenda decides that for $50 a month my aunt and uncle are going to be the caretakers of the property and writes this into their lease. Without giving my aunt and uncle time to research how much a caretaker normally receives. (Turns out to be 25-50% off the rent. Not 25- $50. ) Brenda doesn't give them an opportunity to turn down this clause. This means keeping the entire house, their apartment, the upstairs apartment (for as long as it is unoccupied), the stairs, basement and attic clean. This also means doing all the yard work as well as snow removal. you can't get a weekly yard service for $50 a week, let alone $50 a month. But whatever, they do it, until Brenda decides that they also need to pay for things like a lawnmower that works as well as all the gas for it. That they need to paint the upstairs apartment (of course paying for the paint that she picks out). As well as doing extensive landscaping work.
Why do they need to paint and do landscaping you ask? Brenda is moving in upstairs. She failed to find a new tenet and decided to just move in herself and sell her other house. So her new apartment needs to be re-cleaned (since it isn't clean enough), painted (since she hates the color the tenet before my aunt and uncle painted it), and get this, re carpeted. All at my aunt and uncle's expense since they're the caretakers. And Brenda had decided all these things must be done in a week to make the apartment livable for her.
They said no. They told her they would just pay the extra $50 a month since the compensation was not worth the work they were putting in. Brenda was livid. She decided that after the 4th of July my aunt and uncle would no longer be able to use the washer and dryer on site, since her original posting only said washer and dryer hook-up, not washer and dryer. She gave that up when she found out grandma had saved her original advert and it did in fact say washer and dryer, not simply hook-up.
Brenda has decided that she wants the blinds from our apartment for hers. The apartment came with the blinds and as such she decrees they're her property and we need to hand them over. We pointed out that they were in the apartment when we got it, thus implying they came with the rental. She fought tooth and nail until her boyfriend was caught TWICE peeping in my window! This creepy old guy that stays with her most of the week but doesn't 'live' here was staring in my windows!! He's lucky he didn't get a dagger through the eye! But I digress. Brenda decided to let us keep the blinds when I mentioned my three lawyer friends who all think of me as a daughter and were all rather ticked at her boyfriend's behavior.
When Brenda moved in she put her name on the wrong mailbox. This is a little thing to be sure, but she'd removed my aunt and uncle's name to do it. This means the mailman had assumed we'd moved without leaving a forwarding address, resulting in our mail getting shut off. So we didn't get things like oh I don't know, the phone bill, the gas bill, the water bill. Things that kept getting shut off without explanation since the bill companies were saying they'd sent a bill, and we'd never gotten one. We finally got it figured out when we cornered our mailman the one day. Brenda is refusing to pay the late fees/reactivation fees for bills that would have been paid on time had we gotten the bill. Though it was by no fault of ours that we did not. We'd told her the day she'd mislabeled the mailbox as hers that she'd screwed up and she told us it wouldn't matter, that our mail would just be put in the other, unlabeled, mailbox. Apparently not.
This brings us to our most recent issue with Brenda. The Fleas. Now I mentioned in a previous thread that our apartment had fleas and we had no idea where they came from. Brenda has a dog. The previous tenets had a cat. Either one is a possible source, since flea larvae can hibernate for up to 200 days. This puts it in the realm of Brenda's responsibility, and not our fault. We talked to Brenda. We showed her my legs (which look like I have the plague). Her response was that we had to deal with it on our dime since, and I quote: "Well, my dog doesn't have fleas, has never had fleas, so this isn't my fault."
The bug bombs we used are coming off our rent since we pointed out that we had no animal that goes outside that isn't bathed right after and thoroughly looked over before coming in the house. Hedgehogs are prone to mites and I'm a bit paranoid that Winston is going to contract them. We also pointed out that even if it was the previous tenet and not her dog that it is still her responsibility as the homeowner since the damages were not caused by us.
This is but a sampling of the tales I've got of the Landlady of Useless. But I have to leave for work now.
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