Good Riddance Apartment Living

You may have heard most of this if you followed my Twitter/Facebook feeds for the past 2 weeks, but since it's over now, I'll summarize: Three and a half weeks after moving out of my apartment my former superintendents sent me an email asking for money. Their claim was as follows:

• The apartment was left in a mess
• They had to spend "many hours each day" for a week to clean it up for the next tenant
• They don't get paid to clean
• They assumed I was too busy with my move and work, so didn't bother to contact me until then
• They thought the (4 year old) oven was too dirty, so decided to just replace it

For that, they said people usually give them $150 - $200 to do the clean up for them.  Also, they forwarded an invoice from a carpet cleaning company for $136, saying it was a little extra because it was "heavily soiled".  The last part was the best: saying the invoice can be paid by cheque, but the cleaning part... they preferred cash.

So, I called bullshit on them.

First off, my apartment was not in total disarray when I left.  While perhaps not squeaky clean and the cupboards and fridge needed a wipedown, it certainly didn't require "many hours each day" to clean.  I didn't take a photo log of everything when I moved out, just one as memento, but you can see what state I left my living room in at least.

I know... horrible, right?

Anyway, my other beef was with the carpet cleaning.  I said that if it needed to be done, then I could have done it myself for $30 instead of just throwing an invoice at me.  They said they don't let tenants do their own carpet cleaning, because we ruin them.  My thinking is that if it's a requirement for all move outs, and they won't let us do it ourselves, then hold some of the deposit money back.  Simple.

My biggest beef was mostly about the timing of it.  I handed over the keys to the apartment a full 24 hour earlier than I had to.  They could have taken a look inside and asked me to do some stuff while I was still legally the tenant.  To throw this on me three and a half weeks later, after I had long forgotten about my move, was just too much for me.  The time to go over move out expectation was during the last week of May, not the last week of June.  The fact is, I probably would have been fine with what they were asking, if it was explained to me beforehand and I was given fair time to take care of it.  Basically, it was a lack of respect (along with gratuitous demands for money) that was the core of this whole thing.

One last thing I brought up was what a complete waste to throw out a perfectly working oven because it was deemed too dirty on the inside.  They've obviously never heard of Easy-Off.  The whole thing makes me wonder if they didn't bother to clean, then how could they have spent "many hours each day" for a week?  I called them out on that.

So, after I ripped into them with a reply email, they wrote back.  They threw all the blame back in my direction, but in the end they said to not worry about it anymore and that they were over it.  So basically, they attempted to save face and tried to look like they took the high road.  Oh, I was so tempted to write one more letter back to them, because I still disagreed with nearly everything they said, but the bottom line was that they weren't pursuing money anymore... So I got what I wanted, and to drag it out any more wouldn't be worth anything (except being a little therapeutic for me).

And now I never have to deal with Equitable Life and Beacon Tower again.