'You have to pay us back; we found a way': Tenants modify landlord's coin-op laundry following landlord's refusal to reimburse them for $650 HVAC repair, landlord loses hundreds of dollars

Eleonora Bader

May 30, 2023 10:00 AM EDT

Relationships with landlords are often rocky, unstable, and riddled with undertones of ego, making it difficult to solve issues when they inevitably arise. In this case, OP was living in a large old Victorian house that was converted into about 4-5 individual apartments. The issue that arose was an exhaust pipe that was melting away thanks to the landlord's incompetence when he was installing the HVAC system. The landlord hadn't called a professional, opting instead to do it all by himself. When things started to go sideways, the tenants attempted to contact him, but the man had disappeared off the face of the earth for two whole days.

CO was being released in the building, and the tenants had no other option than to contact the Fire Department who shut it off and Red-Tagged the machine. The landlord was still AWOL, so the tenants called an HVAC company to come to fix it. The repairs cost $650, which is pretty steep. When the landlord inevitably learned of the entire situation, he was livid. He bemoaned that he could have fixed it himself, and refused to reimburse the tenants for the repairs.

Instead of dragging the landlord to court, the tenants found another way to enact some petty revenge. This revenge ended up costing the landlord a lot of money, and he could not for the life of him understand what exactly was going on. Scroll down to read what happened next. For more, here is a boss who threatened to fire an employee after he had refused to answer work calls on the weekend, but HR had another solution on their mind.