Leases often work this way. In theory it's illegal in the UK (for a home, businesses are assumed to be big boys who can negotiate on equal footing) but it's still pretty common to be charged when you move out. Specifically UK law says "reasonable wear and tear" is just an expected cost of people living in a house you let to them - so e.g. they're going to wear out carpet after some years, but a cigar burn is not OK, the walls won't look pristine but there shouldn't be graffiti, that sort of thing. They should vacuum floors but it's not reasonable to expect dust to magically vanish from every nook.
In practice in many cases you move out leaving the place very habitable, you get told they "had" to clean up your mess, and it's a suspiciously round number like £80 and they have plenty more "necessary" charges like this. In theory in the UK they're required to provide receipts showing their actual expense, but in practice they're looking at this as free revenue and most of their clients can't fight back.
I was buying, freeing me from the obvious revenge if I say "Fuck you" but there were a lot of other things to do for the move and having fought them down from the original outrageous fees they wanted I gave up although I did get as far as reporting them to their regulator and threatening legal action. In hindsight I'm quite sure I could have got to $0 and possibly also got the most senior woman who was straight up lying and clearly had done all this many times removed from the register of people fit to let out properties, but I didn't and I feel bad about that.
They absolutely prey on people not being having the time/resources to fight back.
A friend in the UK had his deposit withheld as "mail charges" by his landlord upon moving out. Turned out the fine print in his lease said that he wasn't allowed to receive mail at the house he was legally renting.
> his lease said that he wasn't allowed to receive mail at the house he was legally renting.
Pretty sure that is not a stipulation you can legally put in a tenancy contract. Because both parties have to be able to serve notice on the other via post in writing. Same reason you are legally entitled to know the postal address of the landlord.
I'm sure you are right, but that didn't stop the landlord from trying their luck. Your observation about serving notice is on point, because in the end the deposit was returned only after my friend filed a small claims case against them.
To be clear, mail and post are the same thing, one is US English and the other UK English, though as you can see from the names of the companies involved, the distinction was not always so clear cut.
The comment claiming not to know what "mail" was clearly struck people as a little dismissive of US English (any native English speaker knows both "mail" and "post", regardless of which one is used locally)
I had friends whose landlord attempted to charge them cleaning fees for an apartment that they were renovating down to the studs (and had told them that, etc. They'd been working through the complex.
They had to go to small claims. You can't claim a repair fee for some scratches and dents in drywall that you had crowbarred out the day after vacation of the property.
Always take full pictures of a unit the day you move in before any items are in, and the day you move out after cleaning. That's already saved me once when a property manager tried to do this to us.
Hah, an apartment complex I was at had me go sit in the PM's office prior to our move out inspection. "She'll be with you in a minute". Without snooping (I just caught my name on a form on her desk out of the corner of my eye), I noticed that it was my move out inspection form.
It already had remarks on it like "blinds dirty, need professional cleaning", "scuffs on drywall, needs painting", "carpet stains, need professional cleaning".
Huh.
She comes in, grabs the paperwork from her desk and says "Alright, let's do this". "Actually, I couldn't help but notice you'd already started charging me for things before we've even inspected the apartment". Cue some stammering. "Oh... uhh... that's strange. That must have already been on the form when I copied it from someone else's" (Oh, really, the printed form with my info with blue pen writing?).
And then there was the time that I needed a six month lease, but the PM company didn't want to do less than 12. I said "what it I pay the six months in full, up front, and the lease has no extension, so you know that I'll be gone and you can be planning for the next tenant in advance?". They talk to the owner, sure, that will work. I write a check for $14,000, six months rent at $2,000/mo, plus a security deposit. "That will be $18,000, actually." Huh? "We also need first and last month." Uhhh, what? It took far too long to explain to them that they were getting first, last, and the intermediary in the form of $12K. And got the distinct impression, from the stubborn inability to "comprehend" and "explain" that they thought that I wouldn't question it and just hand over another $4,000.
I did the same thing once (6mo lease, prepaid), and had the exact same issue. Eg, that they were not used to having the first/last being an extra line item.
Lost my deposit in the U.K. way back so it is not a new phenomenon. Landlords were lawyers so I figured it is not worth fighting especially from abroad.
Far better with the deposit protection. You aren’t tying to get money back from a landlord, they’re trying yo get you to agree to release some of it, it’s effectively held in escrow.
Time for the EU to legislate on this. Car rental companies should be required to provide a detailed report to the customer on the damage allowing the customer to challenge any potential cost estimation (with reason) that the rental car company provides. Then the rental companies should be required to prove to the customer the damage was fixed and provide the invoice.
Careful what you wish for. What you may get in one hand they'll take in another. They're pulling other crap like cleaning fees for a grain or two of sand too. Should the EU our saviour protect us against that?
Plenty alternatives to renting a car in Europe. Hit them where it hertz. Take a punt on smaller companies that are competing with eg total all inclusive insurance. Yup they're a bit more expensive sometimes but can result in an better overall experience (there are lots of scammy local companies too)
Yes, laws should generally protect consumers against predatory business practices, even if it affects the businesses' bottom line.
I'd rather be charged a bit more upfront than to see mystery charges showing up on my card after I check out or return a car in the same condition I received it.
Allowing this type of stuff to go unpunished also just hurts honest businesses and distorts the market, since in travel search aggregators, the primary sorting criterion is price.
They'll just find another to screw you but if you like to believe in the coordinated game of cat and mouse actually does any fundamental and long term good, you do you
This could all be covered under legislation. If the EU can finally get airlines to agree on hand luggage standardisation I’m fairly sure they could agree that any additional cleaning or repairs must come with receipts. This makes it a lot easier for CC disputes at that point.
Exactly my thinking. If I get this smoking charge but haven't smoked, I should be able to go to my credit card provider and tell them to get me my 500$ back
What if all the houses are following the “standard industry practice” of chaining anyone who asks for water? What if refusing to follow this practice means that you can’t obtain funding to build a house?
but you don't blame gravity when someone pushes you off your bike. The point isn't that it's not real, it is that you decided the rules of the game when you built a protocol. It's like publishing something under a permissive license and then complaining if someone clones your code and does something with it you don't like. if you didn't want it, you should have built a proprietary platform.
If you create something under conditions that by definition must be robust enough to repel adversial use and it doesn't, what's the point in blaming the bad actor
That's fair, and I'm not "blaming" meta for anything here. They're well within their rights to EEE ActivityPub, but I think it's naive to complain about people calling it out. This new is only really relevant to people who care about Fediverse content, and I see two potential responses from that group:
1) Yay! That's great that meta is helping popularize Fediverse!
2) It's a trap.
I'm in camp (2) - just trying to show people the trap before they step in it. It doesn't matter anyway, these kind of warnings have never, ever worked. Just let the old man shake his fist at the clouds FFS :) Where else am I supposed to do it? Threads?
Extinguish comes after extend -- eg, the goal is to make their client the preferred client for fediverse feeds for a large number of people by adding some kind of feature that they can prevent fediverse projects from also adding. Then extinguish.
What type of feature, and how would they prevent other projects?
I'm happy that there's a non-algorithmic feed in a Meta app. I think that's good for society.
I'm not focused on how this means Meta will be the fediverse overlord in the future, once they release some fediverse-killing feature. When that time comes, I'll be sure to rally against it.
I'm quite sure they'll think of something. I don't think most people could have predicted that apple using an "ugly" color to represent non-iOS messages would have such a strong effect. But apple knew, and they were right.
Edit:
To be fair - "extinguish" is not entirely accurate..RSS, IRC, etc still exist - they're just ghost towns.
I agree that decriminalization in Oregon didn't go well, but it's more complicated that "decriminalization doesn't work". I lived in Portland at the time (and yes, I voted for decriminalization). What I observed:
- The rehab programs were never properly available
- The general culture in Portland made it very difficult for the city to form any coherent response to homelessness. Most people in Portland really want to be "compassionate" to the homeless/drug addicted/mentally ill, so there was strong pushback on any effort to clear homeless encampments (literally to the point that people were advocating for changes in building code that would force commercial buildings to *enable* homeless people to sleep in front of them by building sleeping platforms.)
- This time period overlaps the BLM protests (which were absolutely massive in Portland), with all the "Defund the Police" / "ACAB". Indeed, the majority of Portland has been very anti-police since the late '90s. The police, obviously, didn't like this. From anec-data, it seemed to me that the street cops just stopped even bothering arresting people. (Here's an anecdote - a friend of mine was riding mass transit, with homeless men both behind him and in front of him, who got in to a conflict that resulted in one man brandishing a knife. The police were called and showed up at the next stop, no arrests were made.)
To make the point abundantly clear, the brandishing of knives in public was never decriminalized, but the police absolutely stopped enforcing *any* laws on the homeless.
- Oregon is generally terrible at implementing anything, even well-supported, popular programs fail to achieve even basic milestones of success. There's also a general lack of funding for most everything.
- COVID
- Fenatnyl use rose massively, nationwide, in spite of local drug policy. The negative effects have definitely been more pronounced in far-left cities, but it's disingenuous to assume that decriminalization increased usage.
Don't get me wrong, things got bad. They still are - it's why my wife and I moved after living there for decades. But let's not declare decriminalization as a universally bad policy; the drug war has also been extremely bad too, and it's had a lot more time to work. IMO, the very existince of fentanyl and carafentanyl are direct results of the drug war.
Things got so bad, that you had to move, as a result of all the policies that you support. Consider that your policies are not good, and your defense of them doesn't look like defense at all.
And some of your reasons make no sense. COVID/fentanyl didn't just hit Portland.
> stopped even bothering arresting people
Oh, look, the direct consequence of your actions and your policies. You declare that ALL cops are bad, and then complain when they stop doing what they do. And your DA releases nearly all arrested people without a charge because "compassion", so cops have no reason to arrest anyone.
Again, consider that your policies and ideas are horrible.
better yet, share the link to your blog if you don't mind making it public so we can follow it and find the post when it's ready. (in my case you can also email me (see my profile) and i'll keep it to myself)
