Sunday, August 28, 2016

I rent an apartment and our electric bill tripled due to the refrigerator. Can I recoup some of this from the property management company? (San Diego, California) legaladvice

I'm at the end of the lease of a 3BR apartment. For the first 8 months our SDGE bill was about $80/month. In June it jumped to $180 and I figured it must have been for the few days (about 4) it got really hot and I used the A/C. So in July I decided to suck it up and not use the AC, but the bill still jumped to $300.

I called SDGE to complain about the high bill and they kept insinuating that I was using the AC, or that it was set to auto and I didn't know. (I didn't, and it wasn't) I requested that they send out a tech to check our system. A couple weeks later, a tech came out and shut off the meter and check. He said everything was good and all he could do was recommend my complex check our wiring for a short.

I used a kill-a-watt meter and tested all our major appliances and everything was normal. Nothing made sense because the household usage hasn't changed. A friend came over and checked the seal on the refrigerator. It looks fine, but from what he says the freezer seal doesn't properly seal. He said same thing happened to his fridge and he had a similar spike in electricity usage.

I received this month's electricity bill and it's $270. Can I recoup any of the bill from my property manager? The refrigerator is their property and i've done my due diligence to take care of it like any other tenant. As I mentioned above; the seal looks fine, but doesn't provide a complete seal around the freezer door.

TL;DR: 3 months of extremely high electric bill for 3br apartment. Found out it's due to a bad seal on the fridge. Can I recoup any of the money i've paid?



Submitted August 29, 2016 at 07:38AM by here_to_upvote http://ift.tt/2c1gLX9 legaladvice

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