I have a long drawn out story Ill try to summarize here. Me and 2 roommates live in an apartment complex. We have been here over a year and a half and pay our rent on time each month. Our lease expires in Feb of 2009. One roommate( lets call her rm A) decided to pay of her portion of the lease in full last June. (Without me and the other roommate ( lets call her rm B) knowing until we got ready to pay July's rent but that's a different story!! ) We have to pay the rent by money order because they require that or credit card. July 3rd I purchase the money order for me and rm B at a local grocery and put it in the appropriate drop box at the complex office. Now here we are on Oct 27th. Rm A has decided she wants to sublet her room and have someone else move in. Ok with us. We go to the office to see about this and how it would work since she has a credit. But alas her credit is not as much as it should be. The complex says they did not receive a payment in July at all. They just used the credit to cover that months rent. Now I did not keep the receipt for money order because it was so long ago I thought it went through and everything was OK. They should not have used that credit knowing it was specifically one persons! They expect me and rm B to pay them AGAIN for July's rent. I have contacted western union and we can attempt to start a tracking for this purchase but it is far from garunteed and this whole situation is a mess. The office checked to see if any other accounts still have a credit of that amount on them but none do at this point. For all we know they could have credited it to someone who moved out! I have been crying all day and have no clue what to do at this point. I paid these people! Please if anyone has any advice I would love to hear it. Thanks so much.

Pray that WU can find the payment. Otherwise you are stuck. Records like that should be kept for at least 3 years.

Yes, you have to prove you paid it, or you will have to pay it over

I agree with Chuck and Scott. Unfortunately the burden of proof is on your shoulders. (How did you pay for the purchase of the MO?)

ALSO, the way leases are most commonly done (I have no way of knowing how yours is worded) the management applied the rent exactly how they should have. That's the way I would do it based on how I structure and word my leases. I would have let my tenants know what I was doing and why, but I wouldn't HAVE to. Basiaclly what I'm getting at is that (it sounds like) your apartment is set up with them as one "account", not divided into 3 for the 3 separate roomates. The money comes in, it's applied to the account as a whole, whatever balance is left is owed by the apartment as a whole or credited to the apartment as a whole.

I purchased it with cash. I held on to the receipt long enough (in my mind) that the complex should have let us know that if there was problem with it. The apartment manager admitted that it was known that the credit was for rm a only. We were still unhappy that the complex allowed her tpo pull so much stuff behind our back. It seems that if we are all on the lease we should all have to approve major things like that. This entire situation has been shady and stressful.

Also in the future I will keep my receipt of purchase AND get a signed receipt of payment from the complex manager each month!! This entire experience has made me never want to rent again.

I can definitely understand why you're so frustrated and angry. If you have witnesses to the manager saying that she KNEW that the credit was towards roommate As rent only, then your case is somewhat stronger. In that case I believe that the management should have let you guys know that they didn't receive the rest of the rent for that month(just out of courtesy), but again, TECHNICALLY if there was enough of a credit to cover the rent they really had no obligation to inform you of anything.

I guess I'm not sure that I understand why you're saying "they let her (RM A) "pull" something like that", etc? She paid her rent... what's wrong with that? It seems weird that she wouldn't tell you guys, but that's a communication issue between the 3 of you. I don't see any mis-steps on the part of management for that.

So are they "giving" anything at this point? Or are they just counting the "account" as short 2/3 of a months rent?