‘Free laundry it is…’: Tenant settles the score with entitled landlord after landlord refuses to fix flat and continues to charge a monthly maintenance fee

Author image for Sienna Varady
Sienna Varady
Jan 28, 2024 10:00 AM EST

It's critical that you and your landlord get along. Maintaining a positive relationship with your landlord could make or break the rest of your stay at that specific apartment complex. But what if, in spite of all your hard efforts, your landlord still considers you offensive? 

In the story below, a furious tenant recounts how he's devised the perfect scheme to exact revenge on his entitled landlord. For context, let me say that OP and his partner recently moved into a new apartment building, but before they signed the lease, they made sure to become familiar with the rules of the building. And yet, there was nothing they could have done to prepare for the day when their landlord would utterly quit on them and forfeit his 'official' landlord responsibilities.

Having said that, read the story below to find out more about the specifics of OP's confrontation with his landlord and how OP got even! When you're done, don't forget to read this story about the entitled customer who fabricated an allergy claim to guarantee a customized dinner!

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  • 01
    REEMENT LEAS "So I kinda broke the rules... Dude, you were practically begging for it!" ("Tena ween ement is enta Lease m effe Ord is renting rope 6. ease Agre renewing al Property Le
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  • 02
    Landlord was an a every time an issue occured in my apartment, so I bend the rules a bit *le
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  • 03
    This happened about a year ago and I no longer live in this apartment. Back in CA, my wife and I rented a nice apartment. It had some new features and the monthly rent was a bit expensive, but we felt that it was the better option we had at the time and CA is just generally expensive.
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  • 04
    My landlord was a retired old man, who makes his income through this apartment complex. He was nice when we first met and when we signed papers. On the first day, he told us that if we had any issues, we needed to call him first and he would handle it because he'd rather have himself or his workers do it.
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  • 05
    In the first few weeks, we noticed the blinds were missing and we asked for the missing pieces. He happily obliged and gave it us. Then, after a few days, we noticed the blinds were falling off, so we asked for more pieces. He then started getting and said that he'll charge us if we ask again, so we let that go.
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    Next, we noticed one of the electrical outlets wasn't working. We informed him about this. He got grumpy and didn't believe us. We insisted and he sent his worker, but his worker also said the outlet worked. However, when I plugged in a lamp, it still
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  • 07
    didn't work. They never tested the outlet by plugging anything in it, but I let that go because he just rudely kept telling us it did. So, I don't use that outlet. The last straw was our upstairs neighbor. She complained about our noise level, but it was over
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    the most ridiculous things like hearing the door open or hearing the cabinets and closets open. We don't slam anything or run/walk heavily. Our landlord took her side. In the end, the neighbor tried to make our living miserable by blasting music the whole day
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    and leaving her dog alone to also bark nonstop. Our landlord still took her side and basically ignored us. We were ready to leave once our lease was up, but I wanted to do something to get back at him before we left.
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    Cue the laundry room. There's a nearby laundry room in the apartment complex. Washer and dryer were $3.50 and $3.00 per load. In the first few months, I was playing around with the washer and dryer because I was figuring out how to use it. The
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    settings changed to Spanish and somehow, I was able to bypass the payment method. So basically, I could get laundry done for free. I didn't do it because I didn't want to do that to our landlord. But after 6 months in, where we experienced our landlord's true
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    attitude and treatment (there were many others that I haven't mentioned), I bypassed the laundry payment for the rest of the 7 months we lived there before leaving. On average, I did 3 loads of clothing laundry per week. That doesn't include our bed sheets, washable shoes, plushies (I have a room's worth).
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    That also doesn't include my friends' laundry too (I had some friends stay over a few days), so I did more than just 3 loads a week. Anyway, I did all of that for 7 months. I hope he lost quite a bit of money and paid more in electricity. When I left, I
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    contemplated if I should relay this hack to the other tenants, but I wasn't close enough to the other tenants to make sure this didn't come back to bite me. It was a good run nevertheless.
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    Professional-Rub5386 · 17 hr. ago This made me giggle a little... nice job.
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    Endlessly_Trying OP 17 hr. ago Haha thanks! My wife said I had a smug look every time I did the laundry.
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    andmewithoutmyto wel • 16 hr. ago Honey, my day sked, do we have any laundry that needs to get done?
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    IndependenceNo2060. 16 hr. ago agencies should prioritize tenant welfare too, not just landlords' profits.
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    - S SpaceMonkeyEngineer. 14 hr. ago At one point, I was renting a master bedroom with en suite bathroom in a house in a student housing neighborhood while attending post secondary education. It was far from where I was living so I
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  • 20
    rented it site unseen. There were lots of pictures but in retrospect, the lighting was poor, the pictures low quality, etc. My mistake. The bathroom door hinge was so broken, I had to remove the door and just not have a door
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    to the bathroom, the window didn't work properly, etc. A few weeks after I moved in, the landlord put up a wall on the main floor to add another "room" to the house to rent out that was 100% illegal. Adding
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    another renter to the house also illegally (by- law/safety regulations). Anytime anything that a landlord was responsible for came up, he'd dodge it. At one point, I kept hearing what sounded like
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  • 23
    running water from my bathroom area, but couldn't find anything leaking. My bathroom was on top of the kitchen/dining area, and there didn't appear to be running water issues there either. I was only there during the week and
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    went home on weekends. I did all my cooking, laundry, etc. on the weekends at home, and I'd meal plan and freeze food for the week. So I didn't need the laundry in the basement and never went down there.
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    After over a month of hearing the running water, I decided to go down to the basement thinking, what could be down there running water non-stop for weeks? Well, there was a small leak in a pipe that was spraying a
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    very thin but high pressure stream of water against a wall in the basement maybe 8-10 feet away, with a HUGE pool of water luckily draining into a floor drain and not
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    flooding the rest of the house but leaving 10-12 foot diameter puddle on the floor. Considering the landlord. I paid it no mind. In my area, the water meter is only read once every three months. The
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    landlord was not notified of the leak until he got the water bill after it had been leaking for months. Spraying and soaking the dry wall with a HUGE puddle on the floor for months. Considering my house mates did use the laundry, they must have
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    known for months too. And also didn't inform the landlord. He sent us angry email demanding to know why we didn't inform him. No one replied. Since the water meter was read only once every three months and with the
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    monthly bill being based on the last previous three months, he had a huge back pay correction bill on top of having to pay a large overage for the next following three months too. Yes he likely ultimately had it credited back to his future water
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    bills over time but it still sucked for him at the time to have the extra monthly running cost.
    via u/SpaceMonkeyEngineer

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oddly specific feud landlord drama malicious compliance tenant landlords neighborhood-drama neighborhood-stories reddit story petty revenge Bad Neighbor Reddit oddly satisfying apartment
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