This is a rant a few months in the making. Here is the backstory/players:
A - First landlady when we moved in. Horrible. Lost rent checks. Including one I handed her personally, and then she had the nerve to file eviction because she lost the check.
B - Man takes over. Things seem better, and then one day we get a notice to start writing checks to a new account. Guy is gone. Turns out he wasn't paying the bills. (I found out later he apparently stole 300k in deposit money.)
C - Landlady when we left. Seemed nice and seemed to keep things in line.
D - Landlady that took over right after we moved.
Now, that we've got the players...on to the rant.
Our lease ended on Feb. 28th. Ryan finished up all the paperwork. There was no final walk through, which we contributed to the knowledge that our apartment was one of the ones that needed a rather large updating. A few weeks later, we got the notice at our new place that we would be getting a $250 dollar refund for security. This was signed by C. No check was in the envelope. Thus begins this sorted tale...
I call and finally get hold of D. She tells me she has just taken over, and that the file system was less than accurate. From what she could tell, our refund was in the mail from corporate in California, and she'd forward it to us. This is about the third week in March. Ryan went to sea shortly after, so this slipped my mind until I realized mid-April I hadn't gotten it yet.
I call and get hold of D again. She said she'll be talking to her boss shortly and she'll call me back. She never called back. Soon after the answering machine's memory was full. I guess I wasn't the only one trying to get hold of her. I resort to calling the maintence cell phone to see if he knew where she was. A few days after that (about two weeks total of trying to get hold of her) she answers when I call one day. I finally get the story out of her about B stealing the money, part of which was ours. I told her I understood that and her ability to not get a bunch of details, but ignoring calls wasn't helping her look any better. She said she would work on getting our check to us ASAP.
Ryan went on another trip end of April/first of May. By that point I still hadn't heard from her. I left many messages. I finally got to speak with her again and she said that she'd be seeing her boss the next day and she'd get our check then. She said she would call me back. Can you guess what happened next? Yup no call back.
I start researching my options with Florida law. I find out that I can file a complaint with Florida Commissioner her Florida State Attorney General. I save all my research and start trying to get hold of her again. I finally do. She was like "Your refund was in the mail weeks ago from California." She seemed shocked I was calling. No dumbass, I haven't gotten in the check. And sorry, I'm not going to let $250 dollars just slide into nothing. Especially when by Florida law you have FIFTEEN DAYS to return it to the tenant. By this point we were going on FOUR MONTHS since our lease ended.
So shocker...I didn't get the call back. Last Thursday, the 25th, I call and leave a message that if I do not hear back by Monday, I will be filing said complaints. I also mentioned the part about them violating the Florida statutes. Come July 1st, she calls me back and tells me my check is on her desk. She said she'll over night it to me. It arrived today. Now...some things Ryan and I noticed about said check:
1) It's dated 6-26-09 - Now, if it's been mailed from California weeks ago, why is it dated the day after I call and threaten to file complaints with Florida state government for your shitty business practices?
2) If the check had to come from the California corporate office of the management company, then why is it written from the LOCAL account that all rent checks go into. I wrote all the rent checks, so I still remember the long ass name of that account by heart.
3) I'm guessing she finally got her boss involved or something because the check is written from a name and handwriting I do not recognize. Not to mention she misspelled my name on the envelope to send it to me.
Before I get too happy about having the refund finally, I'm going to wait to see if it clears. Ryan mentioned that and I hadn't even thought about it. I can not believe it's taken this long. This past two weeks I've literally been calling daily trying to get hold of her. Many times over this time period the answering machine memory would be full for WEEKS. That is no way to run a business. I'm so beyond glad we are out of that shit hole. I hated it. Not to mention in my research on trying to find out more, I found out we were not the first to have this issue. There was also apparently a sex offender or 5 near by that we were never told about. I'm beyond glad we're gone from there.
I just had to write this all out. It's been a frustrating four months. I'm glad we didn't need the money, but I was to the point of fighting for it based on principle. Especially when her stories weren't adding up.
