I am in California and I was recently contacted by a collector who said I owed money for unpaid rent to my old apartment complex. Basically I hand delivered my 30 day notice to an agent in the leasing office on August 1 of last year along with my last month's rent. My lease had no provision about the 30 day notice or how or when it should be delivered. I am being told now that my notice was not received until September 8th? And I basically owe for the month of September because a new tenant did not move in until October.

I have a copy of my notice and I am wondering if I have any chance to dispute this.

Ok, now just prove it was given to them on August 1. It will basically be your word against their word, Hard to say who they will believe, you will give them as much documentation as you can to prove this.

Note of why certified mail or some method to date delivery, is a good thing for notices where dates are important to prove

Next you were on a lease, when was your lease up ? You can't of course just leave in the middle of a lease but you have to stay till it ends, if you left proir to the end of a lease, you will be responsible for all rents until someone else moves in, no matter how much "notice you give.

So if you were on a month to month rental, you may be OK, if your lease was to expire on Sept 1, you may be OK, if you moved out and your lease was not up, you most likely will have to pay.

My lease was up August 31 and I gave notice on August 1. There was no provision in the lease at all about giving notice. From what I understand, in California you can send notice via registered mail or personally deliver notice to an agent or the landlord on the premises (I did the latter).

Now I feel like I'm stuck in a "my word versus their word" situation and unfortunately they are saying they didn't get notice until September 8th. I'm pissed that I am going to be forced to pay for some agent's failure to process my notice when it was received.