I have strong gut feelings about a lot of things a lot of the time. And usually my gut is right. Lately my gut has been nagging me to ask my ex-landlord for my security deposit EVERYDAY. Because if I don’t, I’m pretty sure he will not send it to me through the niceness (forget that the return of said deposit is mentioned in a legally binding contract we signed) of his own heart. Recently he’s assigned his assistant to take care of his slumlord tasks, such as returning my deposit back to me.
After the fifth time of checking in with her to see where my deposit is, I check a sixth time with her. Let’s call her SLA, short for SlumLord Assistant. This is how it goes.
Me: Hi SLA, I haven’t seen the deposit yet. Just checking to see what the delay is.
SLA: I apologize for the delay. SL (short for SlumLord) was away for a bit, but I’ll send out the $600 to you today. SL took out $100 for cleaning. I just need your address so I can send it to you.
Me: Actually, the deposit was for $735, so if the cleaning was only a $100 deduction, the deposit should be for $635. Anyway, please send it to me at [here I leave her my physical mailing address, not an address to a worm hole, a galaxy far away or some online banking address.]
SLA: OK, you’re all set! We just did online bill pay to you. Here’s the confirmation number: Cvh-1345-Yh87.
Me [thinking in my head]: What the …. online bill pay?? What the hell does that even mean?? A confirmation number is only good if you know what it’s confirming?!
Me [in response to SLA]: So does that mean you sent it to my bank account??
SLA: No, it was sent to your PO Box.
Me: …
Some terrible punishment really should befall slumlords and those who help them in their dirty work. Something really terrible and awful, like they should be chained to tables and forced to do telemarketing at dinner time, between the hours of 5-8pm, and they will only be fed or allowed to use the restroom when they have achieved a successful transaction. A successful transaction will be defined as the telemarketer receiving consent to call them back every day that week during dinner time to discuss other great products they can get to lower their mortgage payments or ways they can work from home and make up to $100k a year or novel ways to enlarge one’s penis or other fantastic offers of the same quality.