[dwashbur]

New development: the manager who tried to foist this on us was apparently fired a few days ago, so the place is between managers. Our lease is up and we're getting out of here by the end of April, so if they can stay in a state of cluster-**** until then.........

'T'would appear I spoke too soon; that manager was still there today, and still threatening. Confusion reigns...

[dwashbur]

'T'would appear I spoke too soon; that manager was still there today, and still threatening. Confusion reigns...

In any case, one person on this forum told me in a PM that they think I'm on the right track; what do the rest of you think? I tried talking to the interim manager about being allies in this thing, but she wasn't listening at all and sounded like your average bean counter. How far should I try to carry this whole idea?

[dwashbur]

And here's a sort of ancillary question. Our manager's name was Brenda, and her assistant was Natalia. I got to know Natalia by sight, but only periodically caught glimpses of Brenda. Well, when all this hit the fan, I started getting calls from someone named Sarah, claiming to represent the apartment complex. I didn't know of any Sarah, had no idea who she might be, and thought that it was Brenda who had hit us with this thing. I only found out today that it was this Sarah, not Brenda, who I guess had been fired a week or so earlier. Sarah never once identified herself in conversation or any other way, so we really didn't know who we were talking to (she's a district manager of some sort, btw). For all I knew, the mysterious Sarah on the phone was trying to scam me in some way.

Can I do anything with that to help get this thing off my back?

[ScottGem]

First, this site frowns on people answering questions via PM. Anyone doing so is going against the guidelines of this site. When someone answers via PM, there is no peer review to verify the answer. Additionally, the idea of a public forum is so that browsers may benefit by seeing the problems of others and learning from the solutions offered. So I would be skeptical about anyone PMing you with answers.

That being said, until you understand what really happened between the electric company and the landlords, you are operating in the dark. Have you talked to the utility yet?

[ScottGem]

So why not encourage publicly? There is no reason why such a post could not have been made publicly. Again the guidelines of this site are clear on the issue.

[Fr_Chuck]

Yes PM is not for that use, and the person doing so could be subject to review for such action. People have been as far as banned for answering questions by PM.
This is for the protection of those posting.

So yes it is more seroius than you seem to agree. And telling you that you are on the right track is a answer, and obviously from someone that does not care about following the rules. If they don't want to follow rules, why do you feel they have the slightest knowledge of legal matters

[excon]

Hello again:

Dudes! It was ME. He PM'd me and I told him he was on the right track. I don't ANSWER via PM. Instead, I'll often times say innocuous stuff. That's what this was.

excon

[Fr_Chuck]

Ok excon, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you on public forums.

You know better than to confess with out proper legal representation.

(LOL)

OK he PM you first, that does sound more like it.

[dwashbur]

Yes, I instigated the PM-ification. I hadn't heard anything from excon so I PM'ed saying I'd be interested in that person's opinion. My bad, I repent in ackcloth and sashes. Now, I really am in a bit of a pickle here, so any chance we could get back to the topic at hand? (insert big grin here to show I'm not trying to be snide)

[ScottGem]

And, again I ask, whether you have gotten any info from the utility.

P.S. Most of us have notifications set to alert us when someone replies to a thread we have subscribed to (by responding in that thread). So if we don't add a response its probably because we had nothing to say.

[dwashbur]

Haven't been able to contact the utility yet; they roll up the sidewalks on the weekend around here. I'll try again tomorrow.

Meanwhile, what about the question of the person who didn't identify herself? Many thanks!

[ScottGem]

Has absolutely nothing to do with it. As long as the management company is standing behind their request, doesn't matter which employee contacted you.

[dwashbur]

Has absolutely nothing to do with it. As long as the management company is standing behind their request, doesn't matter which employee contacted you.

Oh well, it was worth a shot.

[dwashbur]

OK, I just talked to the utility. Here's the gist of it.

-they only back-bill for three months. This isn't a regulation, it's their internal policy.

-the management only recently contacted them about this, and as a result established our move-in date vis-à-vis the utility company as December 5, 2009.

-they informed the management that they could only back-bill us for the three months, and anything else before that was between the management and us, unless we explicitly assume responsibility for the entire bill. I explicitly refused at that point.

-on the phone, the utility representative told me that the management's ability to come after us for the rest depends on the terms of our lease and any other factors that might come into play. The utility has nothing to do with any of that and will not get involved.

So there it is. Excon gave me a couple of rules to go on, estoppel and mitigation of damages; are there others I can use? Or will these be enough?

The manager sort of accosted me the other day, and said that we'll be hearing from their lawyers so that means we have to pay. I almost laughed out loud at that statement, but I digress. I sent the certified letter as excon said, and cited the estoppel rule as reason enough for us to legally refuse to reimburse them. I decided to hold the mitigation thing in reserve in case I need to blindside them a little later. But she did say one other interesting thing: she claimed she offered us payment arrangements. She did no such thing; she said "I need this money and I need it right now, get back to me by tomorrow morning with it." Obviously I can't prove that, but it gives an idea the sort of person I'm dealing with.

So, is there anything else I should know before the fur begins to fly? And is there anything else I should do?

Thanks! I really appreciate all this.

[ScottGem]

There is one thing that is unclear here. Who has been paying all along? If the utility wasn't billing anyone and no one paid then the management company isn't out any money. That was my understanding. However, if the mgmt company was being billed and paid the bill, then you are going to have to fork over the amount. What the utility is saying is they can only bill YOU directly for three months back dated from the date the account was transferred to your name. This is somewhat different then what I understood the situation to be.

I'm assuming now that the utility was billing the mgmt company all along AND they were paying the bill. As I think I said in an earlier response, you used the electricity so a court will, in all likelihood, hold you responsible. However, I don't believe you will be forced to pay in a lump sum.

So I would offer a settlement to the mgmt company. See if they will accept half to make it go away.

[dwashbur]

No, nobody has been paying it. That's why the bill is so big. Because the management didn't notify the utility company that there was any change of tenancy, the utility has been sending bills to the previous tenant at who knows what address, for all this time. It took them close to a year to figure out that they weren't getting paid, and then they sent a lump-sum bill to the management AFTER that time. That happened a week or so ago, and that's when we found out about all this. The manager told me that the utility would be billing me for the last few months (three, as it turns out) and had billed them for the rest. At that point she hadn't paid them anything. That's why I was suggesting that she and I should be allies in this thing and try to make the utility company eat the bill. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[ScottGem]

Ok, so the utility believes they can bill the mgmt company for all but the last three months but only bill you for those three months. Not sure if that makes a lot of sense. But I still maintain that since you were using the electricity you can be held responsible for the cost.

On the other hand, I agree that the smart thing would have been for you and the management company to band together and make the utility be held responsible for their mistake.

So your next step now is to contact the local agency that oversees public utilities and see what help they can provide.

[dwashbur]

I'm thinking that, under the principles I've been given here so far, the utility can ASK management for the remainder, but can't necessarily DEMAND it. But that's one of the many things I'm trying to sort out here.

It seems to me that those same rules that excon gave me to toss at the management should apply to the utility, I just need to get someone to listen at management. Right now the person who's been after me about this is more worried about her bruised ego than she is about sorting this out.

I wonder how I go about figuring out who oversees the utility company. Time to go a-digging...

excon, I don't suppose you know off the top of your head, since you're in this area?

[dwashbur]

Further developments:

The interim manager presented me with a letter from their lawyers demanding payment by this Friday (3 days from now). Besides the part of the lease I already referenced, they also cited an addendum that says in part:

"in the event you fail to timely establish utilities and services...we may charge you for any utilities and services billed to us with respect to your apartment..."

That's the portion of the paragraph that they quoted in the letter. Based on that, it does in fact appear that we're screwed. Still, I wrote the following back. As before, X is the apartment complex and/or their parent company, Y is the utility, and Z is us:

I am in receipt of your letter regarding the Y bill for electricity. When we moved in here, the manager at the time told us the electricity would be “taken care of.” She did not say what that meant; she implied that she or some other representative of X would perform the task of changing the utility over into our name. Clearly, neither she nor any other representative of X did so. When we did not receive any bills for electricity, we reasonably concluded that, when she said it would be “taken care of” that meant it was included in the rent we were paying. It was not until two managers and nearly a year later that we were ever informed otherwise. We even asked about it on one occasion, and were told not to worry about it.

Inasmuch as the management indicated that they would “take care of” whatever needed to be done, there was no failure on our part and hence paragraph 4 of the addendum to our lease does not apply. The failure was on X's part, not ours, and the lease makes no mention of that eventuality. We therefore maintain that

1. Under the rule of estoppel, X should have been aware of this situation and taken steps to correct it. They did not, and their lack of action constitutes an implicit approval of the situation and therefore responsibility for the cost incurred for the electricity.

2. X is under a legal obligation to mitigate damages such as this, and should have been aware of the situation and done so. They did nothing, and hence make themselves liable to do so with regard to this excessively high utility bill.

But there is more to it than that. Y itself took nearly a full year to realize that they weren't getting paid. Under those same principles, especially the estoppel one, they should be held accountable for this error and have to absorb the cost themselves. It is unfortunate that X has already paid them, because Y needs to be held accountable for such poor accounting. Hence, it is my belief that X, and we, Z, should be allies in this matter and should work together to make Y eat this bill.

I realize we are under some serious time constraints here, so if you have any questions or other need to contact me, please feel free to phone me at...

We actually did ask about the electricity several months ago, and that actually is what we were told by an assistant manager. Unfortunately, we have no way to prove it.

Today, once heads were a little cooler, I tried again to talk to this interim manager, who is actually a district manager filling in until they get a real one, about being allies against the utility company. Her reply was classic bean-counter: it wasn't my checkbook, so I wasn't comfortable refusing to pay it and risk damaging someone else's credit. In other words, it was over my head so I kicked it upstairs without so much as a by-your-leave or any other indication that perhaps they should look into it more deeply, and they rubber-stamped it and paid it since nobody suggested otherwise. This is the kind of response we have gotten from her all along. I'm hoping the lawyer is a little more open to suggestion; we'll see.

The other interesting thing is, if we don't comply with this three-day deadline, they'll give us a 10-Day Notice To Comply Or Vacate. That takes us up to within 10 days of when we were planning to move out anyway! So this is really getting interesting.

Thoughts and comments are appreciated.

[excon]

Hello again, d:

Then you'll just have to fight it out in court. Maybe the judge will go for estoppel. If they don't sue you when you leave, you should file suit for your deposit. They'll countersue, and the battle is enjoined.

excon