Letter from my landlord
This letter was rubber-banded to my doorknob:
Dear Residents:
Thank you for your payment. We realize sometimes things can be over looked, however our records indicate that you have underpaid your account by $0.01. Please remit the amount due within 3 days in form of personal check(s) or money order(s).
[...]
Please feel free to contact me at with any questions regarding your balance.
Your immediate attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
[...]
Accounts Administrator
I went to the rental office, found the accounts administrator, and said "Apparently I owe you one cent. I don't know why, but here's a penny". He wouldn't take my penny; the payment had to be in the form of a check or money order. He looked at my account record and determined that I owned them a cent because when I first moved in, they made a rounding error and asked me for the wrong amount for my first (pro-rated) month's rent. He said they had to ask me to pay the cent I owed because of fair housing laws -- if they didn't ask me to pay the cent I owed, they couldn't ask other residents to pay money they owed.
I added a cent to my next month's rent check.
September 11th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
I’d write them a check and say “Don’t spend it all in one place” and then walk away, lol.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:09 pm
I would have paid them $0.01 as a separate check. It must cost them more that that in processing/handling :)
September 11th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
You should pay your next bill in 0.01$ checks ;)
September 12th, 2005 at 4:31 am
That guy is what my grandpa would call a “mão de vaca”!
September 12th, 2005 at 5:03 am
“I added a cent to my next month’s rent check.”
Are you sure they’re OK with that?
At my last place, they demanded a cashier’s or certified check if you hadn’t paid in full, on time.
You might just want to double-check, so this doesn’t turn into a real farce.
September 12th, 2005 at 7:47 am
You should have added 2 cents, and billed them for the balance.
September 12th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Joe: Yes, they actually suggested it.
September 12th, 2005 at 6:25 pm
Now write to the owner/board/co-op whoever actually sits above the admin people and attach copies of the documentation. Say it is there fault (they did not bill the correct amount) and ask for a refund and an account reconcilliation so you can be sure.
You may only want to do this if you plan on moving soon, as it will piss off the admin people.
September 14th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
just today I got a letter from my college saying I owe them $5.00, which is odd because I have a student loan
the loan money goes to them first, they take what they need, and then give me the remainder
what, did they forget to take 5 bucks? nothing has changed, I didn’t add or drop any classes, and the bill doesn’t say any new fee on it
additionally because I didn’t pay-in-full (when they decided how much they wanted of the money they had in their hands) they have charged me $15 because now I’m on an installment plan
I guess the installments are ~$8,000 for the first installment, and $5 for the second — and I had nothing to do with not paying it all up front
now I have to figure out where a “real person” is to talk to about this
September 27th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
“…they had to ask me to pay the cent I owed because of fair housing laws.”
That’s an ambiguous answer…
October 26th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
This should have been listed as a trackback: http://beatdown.blogspot.com/2005/09/its-called-fuzzy-logic-but-apparently.html
November 11th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Wow. I recieved a bill from AT&T wireless several months after I cancelled service telling me that I owed -$0.57 on my prepaid service, and that I was seriously overdue. When I called to ask how I could be delinquent for failing to pay a negative amount of money on a prepaid plan, they told me that I could safely ignore the bill. Since they don’t know enough about me to file with a credit bureau, I decided to follow their advice, and have not heard from them in the intervening year.