I'll try to make this as short as possible, but this has been drawn out over a couple months so I'm sure it will be very long. I am in Charlottesville, VA and live in off-campus housing, the landlords don't care at all about being nice or helping us because they know we'll be gone in a year.
June: The lease begins on a house that I am sharing with 3 other roommates. I am the only one in town, but am living in the university dorms for my job, so although I stop by and check on the house, no one is living there.
July: We receive our first utility bills for the house. Electricity is $250 and water is another $100 or so. We are obviously shocked, as the house is not being lived in, and attempt to contact the maintenance company, as well as our property manager. It takes over a week for them to respond, and when they finally do they are only marginally helpful. They sent the maintenance people out, who found that there was an "underground leak" and that the AC unit was broken so that it was always running, despite the thermostat being turned off and the fact that it was not actually cooling the house. They also mentioned that the fridge might be broken, and said they would see about getting us a new one. Because I had absolutely no way of being aware that these issues prior to receiving the bill and due to the fact that these were maintance issues that occured prior to my lease starting, I contacted the property manager ans asked her to cover these expenses. They basically said since it took me a month into the lease to report these issues they were not obligated to do anything, yet agreed to give us a $100 credit "out of the goodness of their hearts"
August: We move in with about 10 days left on our current utility billing. Our electricity bill drops to $150, which still seems high considering the house was empty 2/3 of the billing period, but we drop it, because it was significantly improved.
September: Last week we got the utility bill for the past cycle, and it was back up to $300. We contacted the maintenance people first, since the property management company was not open on the weekend. Turns out the AC unit was actually never fixed. Also, we never got that new fridge because they were apparently trying to deliver it and it fell off the back of a truck or something and broke? Who knows. But knowing this, I contacted our property manager again, thinking that obviously she could not deny payment of these bills considering we had reported these issues 2 months ago, and they were never resolved. She kept just bringing up the fact that they already gave us the $100 that they didn't have to, and when I continued to press her about these issues, she said she would talk to the maintenance people to make sure my story was true... but she made it very clear that she is not going to cover these bills willingly.
The real cherry on the cake with this whole situation is that 2 weeks ago, my roommate and I had our cars towed from our parking lot. When we moved in they told us that parking was first come, first serve and had never been a problem. When we called the leasing office about it, they said that we should've received a letter in the mail at the start of Sept, saying that we needed to go pick up our free parking passes. We never received any letter. When we pressed them further about this, all they would say is basically "Too bad, we sent you a letter." There are no signs in the parking lot saying a pass is required, and it is not mentioned in our lease. I looked to see how changes to the lease need to be made and it says "NOTICE. All notices shall be in accordance with Section 55-248.6 of the VRLTA, which provides for written notice to be given by regular mail or by hand delivery, with the party giving notice retaining a certificate of mailing, or delivery of the notice" so I don't think they have this proof, and therefore can they really just implement this change 3 months into the lease?? I really just wanted to see if we have any legal backing for asking them to pay for the towing fees?
TLDR: utility bills are $300+ due to a broken AC unit and refrigerator, leasing company has not fixed despite multiple requests, do we have any legal rights to make them pay for these bills? Also my car was towed from our parking lot, although our lease says nothing about parking passes required, they apparently decided we do need a parking pass a month ago and never told us. Sorry this was so long I just wanted to be detailed!
Submitted September 22, 2015 at 12:57AM by leslieseesincolor http://ift.tt/1FpTdYk legaladvice
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