I’m moving out of my studio apartment. The landlord has promised me he would come by on my last day there to inspect the place after it’s been emptied, but despite calling and texting him repeatedly, he never shows and never picks up or replies. The only message I get from him says I should leave the place unlocked for the team of workers he’s hired, who’ll be in first thing next morning to fix up the place to be rented out again. So, when leaving, I shut the door but leave it unlocked. It seems reasonable enough; in over two years of living there, I haven’t had any attempted break-ins or anyone even trying my door at night.

One of the few things I was provided was a small cheap microwave, which I am supposed to leave there and do so.

After waiting for three months for my security deposit check, never receiving it, having to involve the city’s tenant-landlord dispute resolution department, and being told my ex-landlord claims the check he “sent” — as he was strictly, legally obligated to within 30 days — got “lost in the mail,” it turns out the ex-landlord has decided to also deduct $50 from my deposit money for the microwave, which according to him wasn’t left in the apartment. This is the apartment that I left unlocked overnight on his instructions, which he refused to come to inspect, and which would have been swarmed and turned over by some unknown-to-me crew of workers first thing next morning; unsupervised, they could have done absolutely anything to the place and its contents.

I’m 24 and have just bought a new car. My apartment building’s manager lives onsite. She mentions that a new resident is looking for a car and saw my old car with a “For Sale” sign in the window. Through her, I connect with the guy who might want to buy my car. Our negotiations are a little rocky, but I really want to sell my car, so I accept his offer, even though he needs to wait a week to get the money.

In the meantime, I have a trip planned, so I clean out my car, remove the license plates, and tell the building manager about it and leave the car key with her; I trust her. She offers to hold the check payment for me until I’m back.

When I get back from my trip, my mailbox and door are both full of warnings about my “unregistered car,” alerting me that it’ll be towed within a week if I don’t register it. I go see the manager immediately and ask what it’s all about. She tells me residents are not allowed to keep unregistered cars in our building’s parking lot. I tell her I took the plates off because the other guy was going to buy it and it should be his problem by now. I also ask her if she has my check. She says she has no idea what I’m talking about.

I go over and knock on the guy’s door, and he says he changed his mind. I go back to the manager to get my car keys, and she gives them to me and says I’d better get that car registered.

I immediately put the plates back on, and nothing more is ever said. Maybe it’s for the best that she didn’t act as the middleman for my car sale.

I was looking for a new place to live. I saw a flat close to the city centre and right next door to my college, within my budget, so I arranged a viewing. The viewing went well, so I put in an application.

A week or two later I got a phone call to say I had been accepted and arranged a date to sign the tenancy. The woman I spoke to on the phone told me I would need to pay a deposit equal to one month’s rent and a month’s rent up front.

I arrived the day of the signing and had actually signed all of the paperwork when they informed me it was actually three lots of the rent amount I needed to pay, not two. They seemed convinced that they told me this on the phone. No big deal. It was a communication error. I told them I would be able to pay that in two week’s time, as that’s when I’d get paid. They said they’d have to run that past the landlord.

They phoned me a day or two later to tell me the landlord didn’t want to let to me anymore. I was irritated as the tenancy on my old place was about to run out and I had no more time to find a new place. I ended up staying with friends until I could find another place.

The real kicker is that the place ended up being up for let for around six months. All because the landlord didn’t want to wait two weeks.

(My wife and I have been living in a tiny studio apartment for three years and have finally decided to upgrade, so we are applying for various low-cost one-bedroom apartments within our budget. There is a low-income housing complex nearby that looks promising, so we fill in an application and my wife drops it off after work. She gets a call a few days later and we are invited to see the place. My first name is Alex, and we are both women. Upon our arrival, the landlady gives us an odd look as we introduce ourselves.)

Wife: “Hi! Thanks for inviting us to see the place. I’m [Wife’s Full Name] and this is Alex.”

Landlady: *confused look* “Where is your husband? Is this your friend?”

Me: “I’m her wife. My name’s on the form we filled in.”

Landlady: “Alex is a man’s name. I was expecting a man.”

Me: *laughing, assuming she’s making a joke* “Oh, yeah, I guess it could be confusing, but I’m–”

Landlady: *suddenly icy* “Why did you lie on the form?”

(We didn’t lie or leave out any information, and the form never asked us for our genders. We are both caught off-guard by her sudden change in tone, but before we can say anything more, she snaps at us again.)

Landlady: “I’m sorry; you’ll have to leave.”

Wife: “But we haven’t looked at the apartment yet.”

Landlady: “I’m afraid the apartment is gone. I offered it to a couple who just left before you arrived.”

(She was exuding hostility and while my wife looked ready to argue, I was starting to get anxious and upset, so we left without making a fuss. Since we were never formally offered the apartment and couldn’t prove that we were discriminated against, we didn’t take any action against her, but thankfully we find a much better apartment a couple of months later. On a whim, around that time, I looked up the apartment we had visited before, and lo and behold, it was still listed as available!)

(A year previous to this story, my husband and I moved down the hall in our apartment building. We did everything the landlord asked of us, including taking our blinds to be professionally cleaned. This turned out to be a huge inconvenience, as the landlord required a receipt from one specific cleaning company, who did not make house calls and was located outside the city in a near-rural area. We had to make two round-trips to drop the blinds off and pick them back up. We also did not get reimbursed for doing this. Now fast-forward a year: We are moving overseas. My husband has already left, and I am extremely stressed from dealing with vacating the apartment on my own, as well as the emotional toll of saying goodbye to all my family and friends. I also no longer have access to a vehicle. This conversation takes place on moving day as I am handing my keys over.)

Property Manager: “Okay, I’ve had a look through your place, and it all seems really clean. The only thing is that I haven’t got your receipt from [Blinds Cleaning Company].”

Me: “That’s because I haven’t done the blinds.”

Property Manager: *condescendingly* “Well, that’s going to come out of your damage deposit. The fee for bringing someone in to clean the blinds is [fee].”

Me: “Oh, I know. That’s fine.”

Property Manager: “Why didn’t you do it?”

Me: “Because I did it last year, paid [same fee] to the cleaning company, and didn’t get reimbursed. It also took ages to get out there and back.”

Property Manager: “But you’re supposed to get the blinds cleaned!”

Me: “I know, but it doesn’t make any sense if you’ll just take the same amount out of my damage deposit. The way I see it, by not spending the gas money going all the way out there and back — twice — I’m actually likely saving a bit.”

Property Manager: *silence*

Me: “To be honest, I don’t know why anyone even bothers going out there if you just charge them, anyway.”

Property Manager: “But… it’ll come out of your damage deposit.”

Me: *sigh*

(I don’t think he ever really understood my point!)