Please Govern Yourself Accordingly

If you mess with Denise, you get a strongly worded letter. My time working as a legal assistant has really only done one thing for me, given the skill to write fantastic letters stating my disappointment and disapproval of many things.

So when I still hadn’t received my damage deposit from my old house, and after multiple phone calls, I wrote a strongly worded, albeit nice letter to my previous landlords requesting the damage deposit we had agreed on.

Now, Jenny and I moved out of that house at the end of May. And we worked well into the evening cleaning the already disgusting house so that the new tenants could move in.

About half way through our cleaning, our landlord’s son came to our house and told us not to worry about cleaning the carpets, as he was going to clean them. (Our first mistake was believing him.)

We called our landlord’s later that night and had indicated that we had finished moving and the house was now vacant for the new tenants to move in.

The next day, during church, I received a phone call from my landlord’s asking if we had cleaned the carpets. I told them about the conversation we had with their son, and we both agreed to a small deduction in our damage deposit.

We then arranged for them to mail our damage deposit to our new address. I waited for a few weeks, receiving nothing. I called and left multiple messages. After six weeks of waiting, I wrote my first letter requesting our agreed upon damage deposit, and strangely the letter was returned to me. I called again, and strangely, the phone had been disconnected.

After a few weeks of private eye work, I was able to wrangle a new address for my previous landlord where I again mailed a request for my damage deposit.

This morning I received a phone call from our previous landlord stating she had already paid us our damage deposit. I told her we never received it. And she said she would “look into her records” to verify it had been paid.

As our conversation continued, she began to tell me of all the money they spent to fix up the house we apparently had trashed. And that she felt we weren’t owed our damage deposit because of the condition we had left the house.

Usually not one fond of confrontation, I would have let it go; only wishing I had insisted on a final walk through with our landlords. But after a minute or two, I asked our landlord why we were never notified that we would not be receiving a damage deposit, especially after my previous messages requesting the same.

She indicated to me that she had contacted me and told me of the deductions to our damage deposit, or at least she thought she had.

I told her I was not satisfied with her explanation and was still requesting that my damage deposit owed be paid to me. She agreed that we probably didn’t cause all the damage to the house, but felt someone had to pay for it.

I told her I would talk to Jenny and call her back to discuss this matter further. I am pretty sure that my previous landlord forgot I worked for a lawyer. RDP will know what to do.

It really isn’t the money at this point, although, it is nothing to really scoff at. And I really am not one to do things on principle. But our previous landlord were so stupid, not helpful (Remember the whole issue with the fridge) and usually didn’t cash our cheques until the end of the month. I am almost certain that they did not keep good records, or take any photos of the “damage” to the house.

Well, luckily for me I have free legal advice.

I’ll keep you updated.

Good luck to us all.

As Always,