In 2008 my wife and I moved into the Seasons Apartments. It turned out to be a very nice place, and we had no problems. However, my wife and I had a special circumstance and had to move out early before our lease ended. We went to the office and spoke to the agent and told her our situation, and she informed us that it is not a problem but we need to give at least 2 months notice, and we would have to pay just one additional months worth of rent. On the day we moved out, I went to the rental office. I dropped off two checks. One for the last months water bill which was about $35, and one for the last months rent which was $970 enclosed in an envelope along with our return address. She gave me receipts for both, I filled out the paper work, and filled out a form with our return address. So now they had to copies of my new address. She said if their are any fees we owe, we will get a letter.
About 8 months later, I got a letter in the mail from a collection agency, stating we owe $561!!! It came with an invoice from the Seasons and ALL the charges but one were valid. We were being charged for that SAME water bill I had paid, one months unpaid rent which I paid, a rent concession (My wife and I were in college and got a 10% discount on our rent and they were trying to recover the discount which was $261 and that was not on our lease which we still had in our possession.) The only charge that was valid was a charge for about $45 dollars due to some pee stains our dog left on the carpet. We noticed that our Sure Deposit (An $87 dollar deposit worth $500 which is non-refundable is used to cover damages or unpaid balances then you would have to pay the Sure Deposit company back any part of the money used), was applied to this invoice. My wife and I were confused as to why we never had this invoice mailed to us. My wife marched down to the rental office and they explained to her that they never received our return address, which of course we know is completely untrue, and that they mailed it to our apartment. That didn't make any sense as we had changed our address at the post office a month before we moved out and our new home was already receiving that mail. The date the invoice was made was on the 2nd of February, and we moved out the 30th of January. So of course we would have got it since we were receiving forwarded mail from our apartment the week of the second. They refused to speak to her after that and we had to deal with the collectors.
Days after that we received a second letter from the collectors for $500 for the Sure Deposit. At this point my wife and I were livid. We began getting phone calls from the collectors after that, and we immediately disputed. We were told to fax all receipts, bank statements ect. I did this and luckily within a month we got a letter canceling the $561. After that my wife and I thought that since the Sure Deposit was connected to this account we figured it was canceled as well. We were wrong. A few months later, we got a phone call from the same collector, stating we still owe for the sure deposit. We explained to her that since the first account was canceled, therefore the sure deposit needs to be canceled as well since those sure funds were applied to it. She said she would look into it.
The agent handling the sure deposit was a different agent and also a big idiot. I spoke to her about a half dozen times and had to explain the situation over and over again and it still didn't click in her head. Finally, I suggested to resend my evidence and she agreed to that idea, she said she would take care of it. Weeks went by with no response. One day I decided to check my credit report and low and behold the collection agency was on my report! It was reported about the same week I faxed my evidence! This makes no sense! Why would you report to a credit bureau when someone is actively disputing a collection!? At this point I told this woman that the fact my credit is effected, and that she never informed me this was going on my credit report (They said in the very beginning of all this it wont go on our report as long as we fulfill the debt or have a honest, valid dispute), I decided to threaten to sue both the Seasons and the collector. The next day, I called the collector and they said the Sure Deposit was closed.
Please, please, please stay away from the seasons! They are crooks! If you are renting, i suggest you ask for an invoice of anything you may owe the day you move out so that you can contest anything that is an invalid charge! The seasons knew what they were doing! If they really had sent us that invoice, we would have certainly got it, and my wife and i would've had a hay day with that office staff!
0 comments