[Ontario] Landlord charging us for repairs because we have an A/C unit legaladvice

Hi All!

My wife and I are consulting with a lawyer in the near future on this topic, but I like to be armed with information when I talk with professionals to make sure I got the right one.

We have been renting our current apartment for 17 months now. Our lease includes a clause that we agree not to install or alter any appliances, fixtures, window coverings, etc without their permission. When we signed the lease, we were concerned about this broad language because we usually install at least one air conditioner over the summer (we ended up with two) and we put up window coverings (who doesn't let you have window coverings). When we talked with the person who was walking us through signing the lease (and I believe signed the lease on behalf of the property management company, but we're talking 17 months ago and she no longer works for them), she said that air conditioners were fine, that they were looking more for big ticket items like deep freezers, refrigerators, etc. She also said, as long as we filled in the holes after we moved out, we could put up what we wanted on the walls.

Last week, we had a large dip in power in the home. After the electrician visited for about 30-45 minutes, he determined that the cause was that we had burned out one of the two fuses that power the home (apparently our home is so old it only supports 60W instead of 100W). He wrote on his report that this outage was caused by us running two air conditioners, plus the dishwasher and dryer and submitted it to the property manager for payment.

This week we got a letter asking us to pay for the repair bill (which includes 1.5 hours of work - we are pretty sure he was there for under an hour, because I left for an hour and he arrived and left while I was out) because they did not have a record of us requesting or having permission to install the A/C units. We suspect that, based on the power limitations in the house, we will not be granted this permission (which, with a pregnant wife, will make the rest of the summer dangerous for her).

What I'm hoping is that the verbal permission we got for A/C units and wall hangings from the agent we talked to is enough to qualify as obtaining permission, even if this person never recorded it and may not be findable again. But it is essentially our word against theirs. Is there anything else I should be talking to the lawyer about? Anything else I should know?

Submitted July 19, 2015 at 02:20PM by ottawadeveloper http://ift.tt/1SuUHkx legaladvice