Updated: Landlord charging hourly rate for emails and phone calls (rant, I guess)

[no_such_reality]

flu, I did not say post a yelp review. I said, maybe he’d like to let the new tenant know his experience,

[quote]Perhaps you’d like to offer your humble opinion to the new renter so they know what kind of service to expect from the business when they look to leave.
kind of a personal renter to renter yelp review…[/quote]

aka. verbal person to person.

Absolutely 100% do not stick anything online. Because frankly, I think you’re right, the guy would be a pain in the backside.

It’s a classic, how much of your time is worth $400. Well, $1200, since 3X is the part he can get back if the judge finds in his favor.

[edna_mode]

Beware sunk cost accounting!
While I’m sure that rectifying this provides priceless satisfaction, at the rate you stated ($280/hr), you have likely already spent $400 worth of your leisure time just posting about this on Piggington.

If it helped save you the cost of therapy, great.
However, beware not just throwing good money after bad, but good *time* after bad. You can’t get your precious hours back. Is there something you do that would help you get focused on the future, to help let this go?

[Coronita]

[quote=edna_mode]Beware sunk cost accounting!
While I’m sure that rectifying this provides priceless satisfaction, at the rate you stated ($280/hr), you have likely already spent $400 worth of your leisure time just posting about this on Piggington.

If it helped save you the cost of therapy, great.
However, beware not just throwing good money after bad, but good *time* after bad. You can’t get your precious hours back. Is there something you do that would help you get focused on the future, to help let this go?[/quote]

Remodeling your home that you just moved into is the perfect solution…You’ll be so busy on your new home, and you’ll be spending so much on your new home, you’ll quickly forget about the $400 from the landlord. 🙂

Trust me, you’ll want to be pretty knowledgeable and have your trusty handymans lined up or quickly learn how to do things yourself. $75 to change a faucet excluding the cost of the faucet. $75 to change a garbage disposal… A couple of hundred to change the water heater, plus the stupid license. $300 to replace a A/C capacitor if you have a/c and don’t know how to do it yourself. But the biggest ripoffs? Appliance repair.

But OP, you’re in luck. You see, although I could have hired someone to do most of the repair work in the past, being the typical stubbornly arrogant engineer as I am, I refused to accept defeat…My famous last words? “Come on! For an engineer, how hard could this be?”…..All the way to the time time I replaced my oven’s logic board forgetting to shut off the power and accidentally dropping a screwdriver on the two live 220V A/C wires. Well, at least my circuit breaker worked…:( But seriously, if you ask, chances are I’ve dealt with it.

[njtosd]

[quote=PCinSD][quote=njtosd][quote=Hatfield][quote=Balboa]it’s just as likely that a judge would tell them to suck it.[/quote]

Only one way to find out![/quote]

That is the key. Filing suit is expensive – even small claims court costs something and is time consuming. Finding out what a judge would do would probably cost more than what was deducted. The legal system is not designed to deal with issues like this and frankly shouldn’t. The cost in government resources would be way too high.[/quote]

If he doesn’t pay the “lawyer”, it’s up to the lawyer to file the small claims lawsuit. Cost is minimal.

As a lawyer, this pisses me off.[/quote]

What part pisses you off?

[FlyerInHi]

I’m with PCInSD, you should file a small claims. It’s not hard. You will win and if’s a valuable learning experience that maybe useful in the future.

[La Jolla Renter]

Taking a lawyer to small claims is a very bad idea.

If they want to get nasty, they can counter sue and kick the case to civil court. And that is when your spat can get very costly because at that point, you pretty much have to hire an attorney to navigate civil court.

Walk away.

Congrats on the home purchase.

[no_such_reality]

The walk away advice from La Jolla and flu is the best advice.

That’s why you sleep on things.

Dealing with the wanna-be Trumps of the world that bully small dollars out of people under implied threat of lawsuit are a pain in the ass. They’re banking on the $400 not being worth the time to get and they’re banking on the possible you’ll get counter sued and cost you $10K.

[Coronita]

[quote=FlyerInHi]I’m with PCInSD, you should file a small claims. It’s not hard. You will win and if’s a valuable learning experience that maybe useful in the future.[/quote]

Just curious… When was the last time you took someone to small claims in CA? And over what?

And just to clarify also, you don’t work full time do you ?(i.e. your free time is pretty flexible)

I think it would be useful for the OP if you clarify if you’re recommending this based on experience or just based on theory.

[FlyerInHi]

Flu, I have flex hours but I do work full time. Not the traditional full time but I work weekends too.

Based on experience, over debt owed. That was about 1 ago. All you need to do is appear in court once. If you can easily prove your case, the judge enters judgement.

This landlord is a lawyer. Chances are very high he will return the $400 once he receives the demand letter. In the letter state that you will file small claims if he fails to return the money within 30 days. It doesn’t hurt to write that letter.

Btw, there are no lawyers in small claims. It’s kinda like the people’s court on tv. Calmly and clearly state your case. Provide supporting documents.

[PCinSD]

[quote=njtosd][quote=PCinSD][quote=njtosd][quote=Hatfield][quote=Balboa]it’s just as likely that a judge would tell them to suck it.[/quote]

Only one way to find out![/quote]

That is the key. Filing suit is expensive – even small claims court costs something and is time consuming. Finding out what a judge would do would probably cost more than what was deducted. The legal system is not designed to deal with issues like this and frankly shouldn’t. The cost in government resources would be way too high.[/quote]

If he doesn’t pay the “lawyer”, it’s up to the lawyer to file the small claims lawsuit. Cost is minimal.

As a lawyer, this pisses me off.[/quote]

What part pisses you off?[/quote]

Why do you ask? Thought it was obvious.

[Balboa]

Hi pigs — since several of you took the time to provide feedback and advice, I wanted to come back with an update.

I decided to go the demand letter route– I spent a good deal of time on it, attached a table itemizing the disputes, and sent it by email and certified mail. I’m not even sure they’ve received the certified envelope yet, but we received a terse email today saying that they wholly disagreed with our letter but were cutting us the check we asked for since it would be a waste of their company’s time to do otherwise. Close to $500 — totally, totally worth it to me, mostly emotionally. Yes, it was a lot of time scouring the internet, but I’ve never made $500 on the internet before. 🙂

Flu, hopefully this doesn’t mean we can’t still avail ourselves of your home-owning and engineering expertise. We’ve been here a little over a month and I think we’re about to run out of issues that can be solved by turnbuckles and J-B Weld!

For other renters who might end up in this thread, I’ll paste in some of the most useful parts of the letter:

Landlord did not comply with the requirements of Section 1950.5(f)(1-3) with regard to noticing, conducting and documenting a Pre-Move-Out Inspection.

Identification of the name, address, and telephone number of the person or entity paid to perform the repairs was required per California Civil Code Section 1950.5(g)(2)(B).

Receipts for the cost of materials were required to be provided per California Civil Code Section 1950.5(g)(2)(C).

Section 1950.5(e) prohibits security deposit deductions for ordinary wear and tear and pre-existing conditions.

[Specific to broken leases and, in our case, the $175/hr admin charges]
The proper calculation of amounts due to Landlord under Section 1951.2(a)(4) requires consideration of excess rents Landlord will collect as a result of the cancellation of our lease and the subsequent rent increase charged to the new tenant. (“Unless the total detriment suffered, whether by loss of rentals or consequential damages, exceeds the amount to be received under the new lease there is in fact no detriment, and hence no damages.” Willis v. Soda Shoppes of California, Inc. (1982) 134 Cal.App.3d 899 at p. 905.)

ETA: There is still a question about whether any of landlord’s administrative time can be charged. We just assumed it could be and then said it didn’t matter because the rate was unreasonable and excess rent would cover any reasonable rate.

[no_such_reality]

Good for you!

Congrats!

[barnaby33]

Party at FLU’s house?
Josh

[Balboa]

Thanks, no_such_reality. it still feels good!

Barnaby33, party at anyone’s house but mine! Already a little burnt out on visitors. Especially once everyone’s past the age of sleeping on couches and floors, there is a certain freedom in being able to say, “Darn, we only have the one bedroom.” 🙂

[Author]

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