'You should have just paid the ticket': Landlord gives tenant expired permit, then refuses to pay parking ticket

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
Aug 7, 2023 1:00 PM EDT

Landlords use their ability to make their tenant's life miserable way too often, but sometimes tenants square up, and landlords need to face the bitter consequences of their actions. People say that petty revenge is for children, but I disagree and don't think that there is a particular age limit to getting so sweet payback on your landlord who owes you some money. In this case, OP had just graduated college and was looking for a place he could rent with a couple of friends. They found an apartment in a great location and signed the lease that very day.

The landlord had given OP a temporary parking permit, which at first glance, seems like a very nice thing to do. OP had driven in from the suburbs and was very grateful for said parking permit. Except there was one minor, little, tiny problem… and that was that the parking ticket in question had actually expired, two whole years ago.

OP got a ticket for $70, which he was understandably pretty upset about. The landlord refused to pay for the ticket, even though it was one hundred percent his fault. So OP had to get creative with his petty revenge. He came up with a clever plan, which you can read about below.

For more, here is an employee who got fired, when they were supposed to be getting promoted instead.

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  • 01
    Font - Posted by u/nuostabus 11 hours ago The Landlord should have just paid the ticket... Hi everyone! Long time lurker, first time poster. I was telling this story to one of my friends and they suggested that it would fit here and
    via nuostabus
  • 02
    Font - I agreed, so here goes. I apologize for the length - I had to set the scene. Enjoy! This takes place back in the summer of 2019. I had just graduated college and me and a two of my high school friends decide to move in together. We started looking for apartments and ended up finding one that was in a great location
    via nuostabus
  • 03
    Font - in a big city and not too far from all of our jobs. Well, we go to meet up with the landlord. I had to drive in from the suburbs to see the place, and the landlord gave me a temporary parking permit (very nice of him) to use since this area of the city is all permit parking (this is key for later). Aside from some
    via nuostabus
  • 04
    Font - squeaky floor boards, it was perfect - it had 3 above sized rooms with a giant balcony, and we were the top floor (second floor). Overall we were very happy and signed the lease that day. Fast forward a week from the signing and we were beginning to move in. I still had to commute from the suburbs so I
    via nuostabus
  • 05
    Font - loaded up my car with the intent of staying the night to move everything in. After all, I hadn't used the temporary parking permit the landlord gave me when we were looking at the apartment since it was a quick 15min thing. Well, low and behold, I come out to my car the next morning after moving in and I see that my car has a big fat ticket on the
    via nuostabus
  • 06
    Font - windshield. I look at the ticket and under the 'reason' it states 'Parking Permit Expired'. Now you may be asking yourself, 'OP why didn't you check the permit for an expiration date?', and that's a good question, likely because I was in a rush and just slapped it on my car and didn't think much more about it. Looking at this ticket, and reading more
    via nuostabus
  • 07
    Font - into the 'reason' section, I discover that the parking permit that the gracious landlord had bestowed upon me actually expired in 2017, TWO YEARS AGO. Now I think of myself as a reasonable person, and if this parking permit had expired a day or two ago, or even he day after I was given the permit then I would have gone ahead and paid the $70 ticket
    via nuostabus
  • 08
    Font - myself. That, however, was not the case, and I wholeheartedly blamed the landlord since I would have still gotten a ticket while I was seeing the apartment. So, I reach out to the landlord and explained the situation, and asked for my rent to be credited $70, since it was his fault he gave me a two year expired permit. To no one's surprise he refused,
    via nuostabus
  • 09
    Font - called me names, and said that his obligation to provide me a working (lol?) permit ended the day of the apartment showing. Long story short, after some back and forth, he agreed to pay half of the ticket and credit it to my rent. Yay! Except I wasn't satisfied, and as a fresh grad, whose job didn't start for another 3 weeks, I had nothing but time on my
    via nuostabus
  • 10
    Font - hands. So, bring on the petty revenge. For the next week I started plotting how I could get the rest of my money back from the ticket debacle with my landlord. But how do you get your money back and not get caught? My dear reader, the answer laid in the washing and drying machines.
    via nuostabus
  • 11
    Font - In big cities it is common for multi-family apartments to have out-of-unit washer and dryers that all the floors use. Ours was located in the basement. Not to mention they are usually not free, as was our case ($1.75 per load, per washer/dryer). Well, one day, while I was plotting, and shoving my hard earned quarters into the washer/dryer, I had a
    via nuostabus
  • 12
    Font - light bulb moment. What if I could not pay for laundry? I would get my money back and no one would know. So I rushed back upstairs, did my research on how these machines work. When you select your washer/dryer setting, put the quarters in, and push the lever in, there's a switch that gets hit at the back, and boom the machine starts working. So
    via nuostabus
  • 13
    Font - what did I do? I simply looked up the serial number and manufacturer of the machines, called said manufacturer, impersonated some random landlord saying I misplaced my key fob for the safe box (where the quarters and lever are) on the machines, and would like to know the serial number for the key fob so that I could order a new one. The
    via nuostabus
  • 14
    Font - person I talked to didn't hesitate, gave me the serial number, and I ordered the key fob with expedited shipping off some 3rd party website that day for $16. I was so excited the day the key arrived that I almost fell down the stairs running to the laundry room. And did my plan work? Without a single problem. I brought some laundry with me, picked
    via nuostabus
  • 15
    Font - my washing settings, and then opened the safe box exposing all the collected quarters, wires, and lever. Now, I could have taken the quarters, but I didn't want the landlord to get suspicious. So, I decided to leave them be and just have my access to free laundry by pressing the lever and putting the safe box back on the machines. Now you might be
    via nuostabus
  • 16
    Font - wondering, how much money did you actually save? Well, I kept track. Of. Every. Single. Time. I. Used. The. Machines. I wanted to know how much money the landlord was losing. And I wanted to know bad. So at the end of the year lease, I ended up using the washer 68 times, the dryer 70 times, and at $1.75 each time, it came out to be
    via nuostabus
  • 17
    Font - $241.50. You might be thinking to yourself 'OP that's only $200 or so, couldn't you have done better?', and you would be right. And I did do better. I ended up letting my roommates in on my secret half way through the lease,
    via nuostabus
  • 18
    Font - and then ended up leaving them the key after I had moved out. Did I mention they stayed at that apartment for another 2 years? So, Mr. Landlord, you should have just paid the ticket...
    via nuostabus
  • 19
    Font - bradpliers 11 hr. ago · I got lucky with an expired day pass in Chicago. I looked all over that dan ticket for expiration date and didnt see one. It's funny because after getting the ticket I checked the
    via bradpliers
  • 20
    Font - pass and sure enough the expiration date was clear as day. Who knows where my head was at. I fought the ticket like I do all tickets and decided to be completely honest about what happened. The only time in 10 years of parking tickets that I
    via bradpliers
  • 21
    Product - begged for mercy and actually recieved it. ↑ 497 ↓ Reply Share LEORet568 +1 · 11 hr. ago I appealed a "resident only" parking violation in Chicago, using their online portal. Reviewed the
    via bradpliers, LEORet568
  • 22
    Font - ordnances, & found the violation didn't occur, due to "holiday" exemptions. Ordnance doesn't clarify what holidays are - so I was able to cite Illinois State, Chicago City, and several religious holidays.
    via LEORet568
  • 23
    Font - Never got a response, & still sometimes get a notice in the mail. (I'm from out- of-state, with no known or planned return.) IIRC, it takes multiple tickets before the vehicle could be either booted or impounded...
    via LEORet568
  • 24
    Font - ringo5150 +1.4 hr. ago I salute you for rorting someone else's passive system for your own gain. I once worked for an employer moved offices and we plebs went from having free parking
    via ringo5150
  • 25
    Font - to having to hunt for public parking and often having to move our cars to avoid tickets. Executives got to use the executive car park and display a permit to avoid fines. I took a photo of someone elses executive parking permit with my phone.
    via ringo5150
  • 26
    Font - I printed it at work using their whiz bang printer, and laminated it using the work laminator and used it successfully for 2 years until I left to park where executives at my office where allowed to park.
    via ringo5150
  • 27
    Font - I did it quietly, parked down the back, and told no one. Saved myself hundreds of dollars in parking meters and potential fines. One of my colleagues was just coming back to work after having kid number one. She told me that she was sleep
    via ringo5150
  • 28
    Font - deprived, arrived late, took the first park she found and forgot to move her and got fined. I printed her a copy of the same permit I had, swore her to secrecy and gave it to her. Her relief and smile were epic. 4 20 Reply Share
    via ringo5150

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laundry laundry machine suburbs apartment-lease landlord neighbors petty-revenge-reddit parking-permit parking ticket revenge-reddit tenant big-city resident roommates payback
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