Small claims court? The landlord has to prove that the cleaning/repairs were necessary, so unless he can do that you're in the right.
http://www.courts.ca.gov/1049.htm
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Need help with $1,300 in apartment fees.
Last year, I signed a 12-month lease running from September 2010 through August 2011. Well, my current job in Honduras started this month, so I left a month early.
Today, three weeks after I moved out, my family gets the bill from the apartment complex (my parents had me use their address as my "permanent address"): $800 for "liquidating damages" (from losing rent money that I would have paid for August), $500 for a discount I was given for signing the 12-month lease, $150 for a "full clean," and $150 for shampooing the carpets (minus $300 deposit, which was deducted from the bill, thus making it add up to ~$1,300).
A: Apartment management told me they needed 30 days notice. I gave them 30 days notice.
B: It's illegal in California to charge for automatically shampooing the carpets; I vacuumed the entire floor, every nook and cranny, three times and there wasn't a single spot or speck.
C: Apartment management cites dirty stoves, dirty oven, stains in bathtub, dirty toilet, and traffic wear on carpet. I cleaned the toilet twice to make sure it was spotless; I spent parts of three days on the bathtub, and all that was left behind was a set of stains from age, which management's own paperwork lists under normal wear and tear; the stoves were spotless; and traffic wear on the carpet not only is considered normal wear and tear (am I not expected to walk in this apartment?), but was listed by the manager on his move-in inspection sheet before I moved in. They got me on the oven, which I used twice in my ten months there; for this, they charge me the maximum.
D: None of this was shown to me in advance, let alone in writing. In fact, the bill my family received - three weeks after I moved out - is the first that they've communicated to us, and they've already sent this to a collection agency.
E: I worked for two years as a janitor (in fact, doing a fair number of move-out inspections and cleanup myself), so yeah...I know what I'm doing. Plus, at the three other apartments I've lived in previously, I always got back at least half my deposit (and once got the whole thing back).
My gut reaction is to say that I'm on the hook for the $500 from the promotion, which I was told I'd have to pay back if I left early (no surprise there).
Other than that, though, what does anybody else think? Does anybody happen to know much about California tenancy law? So far, I myself have not participated in any interaction with the apartment complex since I moved out in July, and I have not interacted with any collections agency either.
PS I realize that it's somewhat classless of me to storm out the way I did, and then come back only when I need you guys for something. The fact is, I don't know of anywhere else I could turn for advice on the matter. I can't afford these fees.
Small claims court? The landlord has to prove that the cleaning/repairs were necessary, so unless he can do that you're in the right.
http://www.courts.ca.gov/1049.htm
[FONT=Arial]“Whoever labours becomes a proprietor... And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, – I mean proprietor of the value he creates, and by which the master alone profits... The labourer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right in the thing he has produced.”[/FONT]-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property?, pg. 123-4
Thanks! Any idea on the $800?
fuck man, good luck. funcking landlords are bastards. as for advice, i have none
FKA Vacant
"snook up behind him and took his koran, he said sumthin about burnin the koran. i was like DUDE YOU HAVE NO KORAN and ran off." - Jacob Isom, Amarillo Resident.
Well, step #1 is going to be to empty out my bank account and start a new one; when I moved in last year, I had to give some bank account info to the apartment complex, so the collection agency could quite conceivably have my account frozen.
Apparently, as soon as the agency contacts me, I have 30 days to ask them for validation of debts. If they don't respond, I send a second letter after such-and-such time, including a cease-and-desist clause so that they can only contact me via mail. If they still don't validate the debt, I send a third letter after X amount of time; if they still don't validate, then the debt is considered "dead." The beauty of this method, in theory, is that from what I read, agencies generally don't even bother to read, let alone respond, to letters from debtors.
My current roommate tells me as well that when he worked as an accountant, he had to deal with collection agencies, and he'd always write to them, "I am sorry that you have chosen to ignore your duty to perform due diligence in seeing if this collection is valid, but any attempt to collect from us is legally actionable. We urge you to desist immediately from any pursuance of this action." What makes this rather tempting for me is that, from a few links I've found (trying to substantiate still), it looks like holding on to a tenant's deposit in bad faith can result in a fine of up to three times the deposit. While I might owe $200 from the discount minus deposit, they'd end up owing me $900.
PM praxis1966.
And please, post your conversation here, it would be great for future reference
I missed the last two responses to this thread, so sorry for the late reply.
Anyway, since I am currently in a country with practically non-existent mail service, I had my female progenitor mail my response to the collection agency on my behalf. The response reads as follows:
My female progenitor reports the following:
That last line is in response to a concern of mine that we had no proof that the agency had received the first letter within the required 30 days. (You have thirty days to send a validation request upon receiving the first letter from the collection agency; otherwise, the debt is presumed valid).
Also, come to find out, the collection agency is actually the collections department of the management company that claims I owe the $1,300.
my understanding are that CA laws are one of the most pro-landlord laws in the Anglo-American judicial system if not the world, and that unless you did a walkthrough that was signed ahead of time you're basically screwed esp. given that it seems they already gave you something of some documentation of the costs deducted. You can take them to small claims court, but if they've put together an official looking invoice most judges are very skeptical to overturn private party decisions unless you have photographic evidence of "before you moved in" and "after you moved out" or before you left and the two are comparable.
This is assuming you can even go to small claims court. Most landlords know that people who move move out of their metropolitan area (to places like Honduras) and cannot readily defend themselves. Plus lawyers etc... are explicitly forbidden.
It's an awful, awful situation. But unless you live in a very rural community with a huge surplus of rental units, the high price of homes in california virtually ensure a pro-landlord market when it comes to renting and renters, especially those who move out, are systematically at the mercy of slumlords.
I'm guessing you may have to just bite the bullet on this one as a painful lesson learned. Unfortunately it's called "capitalism" for a reason, with those with the capital wielding insane power legally and otherwise over those without.
Having said that, if you have copious documentation that can convince a skeptical judge (who may themselves be a landlord) and the time and willingness to contest it in small claims court, it is worth a shot. The problem is too few tenants take this route because it is so daunting, but you might be the lucky person whose judge decides to make an example of your landlord. I guess it comes down to whether, in light of all that is going on in your life, it is worth it. Sadly, most landlords in CA (as well as elsewhere, I suspect) are willing to bet that for most people ,it's just not worth it to pursue.
百花齐放
-----------------------------
la luz
de un Rojo Amanecer
anuncia ya
la vida que vendrá.
-Quilapayun
So far, all they've given me is the original bill and a statement that they overcharged me $25. I know I'm not getting my deposit back on the cleaning issues, no matter how screwed-up that is, but they've provided no documentation to substantiate the $500 charge on the discount and nothing to substantiate "liquidated damages"; in fact, I have somebody who can testify that the apartment complex manager was telling people that they had no vacancies, which meant that either they had already leased my apartment off to somebody else (ergo no loss on the rent, ergo no damages for me to pay) or that they were obstructing their own attempt to lease the apartment (which makes the loss not my fault anymore).
Yeah, you're right; the laws here are very heavily pro-landlord. It's not so bad, though, that you can just make up a fee out of thin air without some documentation to back it up. As long as I can get those two issues taken care of - the "liquidated damages" claim and the discount claim - then I'm okay, because then my deposit cancels out everything else that's left and I'm just out a deposit that I didn't have to begin with.
You might want to check for a Solidarity Network in your area.
