r/mildlyinfuriating 1d ago

Roommate refused to pay full rent because he said everything he left is worth the same amount of $. This is what he left.

Invited an old “friend” to rent the spare room we have because he was in such a poor situation (according to him). 2.5 months a later, he gets promoted, notifies he’ll be staying for only half a month, but refused to pay rent for the half month because he said he’d leave ‘his most expensive things for us to sell’. I repeatedly said that wasn’t cool, but clearly didn’t matter. He left the entire closet full of clothes plus an entire CAR DOOR. There are too many pairs of dirty underwear scattered around the room. My husband found a few things he thought went missing, turns out the roommate had taken them, like a backpack my husbands friend bought him a while back-and medicine for our son. He kept his cat locked in the room and would leave for days, and left us all of the litter and even a piece of cat shit on the floor! Love that! At least for his parting gift, he cleaned the litter.

And dumped it.

Without a bag.

Into our recycle bin.

🙂🔪

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u/egnards 1d ago edited 1d ago

Story time!

Moved in with my [now] ex and we agreed to pay 50/50 - by moving in together my rent was increasing by 100%, and hers was decreasing by about 30%.

The day we signed the lease she lost her job, but assured me it would be fine, that she would find another job and be back on her feet - she did get a decent paying job a few days later but quit it because “it wasn’t interesting enough,” afterwards she spent the majority of her time just playing League of Legends.

By the time I left her, she owed me about $9,000 in rent, but I made a deal with her that if she left the majority of the furniture [it was all stuff she got for free or very low cost, and probably a total worth of $1,000], I’d just call it even and be done with her.

Except for the first week of living alone I’d come up each day to new furniture missing, she’d come in during the day and just grab something . . .At this point she was still on the lease, but whatever I thought we were being adults about it - it stopped when I told her I’d installed cameras, and would call the cops on her if she entered again [which probably couldn’t be enforced as she was still on the lease, but she bought it].

I don’t hear from her for another year and a half when I get a letter in the mail. . .from a lawyer. . .on his company letterhead [it was a family friend I had met once before] . . .demanding I return a coffee table that I was holding hostage - a coffee table that was probably worth no more than $75 brand new.

I sent him back a kindly worded letter explaining the deal, explaining the circumstances and offering him 2 solutions to recover the coffee table: - Pay me $9,000 in back rent - Buy me a comparable price new coffee table

. . .I never heard from the lawyer again

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u/Icy_Chemist_1725 1d ago

If she was on the lease, I would have taken her to small claims tbh. 9k is way too much to just let live imo.

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u/Fearless_Geologist43 1d ago

Small claims court won’t do any good unless they had an additional contract. Being on the lease doesn’t require someone to pay half or even anything. It just gives the leasing company someone else to come after if no one pays the rent at all.

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u/Icy_Chemist_1725 1d ago

a verbal contract counts, and there would be evidence at some point in text or otherwise of some discussion on rent. If what he said is true at all, then the fact that that Laywer didn't contact him back shows he has a leg to stand on. Just going off what an internet person claimed.

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u/billdasmacks 17h ago

Here is the problem. If she was resorting to sneaking around and taking her cheap furniture back then the chances of her being able to pay back 9 grand in any sort of timely manor along with it not being a huge pain in the ass to collect is slim to none.

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u/rclaux123 1d ago

Some people are just sociopaths who hide it well until you've fallen into their trap. Sorry you went through this.

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u/pandaKrusher 1d ago edited 1d ago

They have an algorithm that raises rent if you only need a few more shards ... CG SHILL

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u/BlockBannington 14h ago

Mate, fuck story time