Landlord trying to evict us for noncompliance with…nothing.

By Lilly

We have bed bugs and our manager is being a pest about it. We gave him a 7 day notice initially and he responded the next day with a notice that he received it. So he sends this clueless guy over to inspect and he verifies that yes we have bedbugs (we had bites and a sample in our freezer). I call the manager and he is argumentative from the start. "well did they actually say you have bed bugs? Because we aren’t going to treat if he didn’t say you have them" I explain that yes he verified and he didn’t give us an exact time but said they would be here sometime between 10 am and 3 pm and we will need to be gone for about five hours. We have a dog and need to be gone for five hours. I offered several suggestions and he turned them all down. And I finally said "we will stay in a hotel then for that time (dog can’t be out for five hours in the heat) and we will deduct part of it from our rent if that is ok." He says that he can’t pay for a hotel for a few hours, only over night. what? Ok. So anyway the guy who came out was very uninformative so we called his manager. The manager of the pest control company said that they leave it up to the landlord to prepare the tenants and that he should be sending a written notice of what to do. He also gave us some additional instructions. We never got a written notice. And the apartment wasn’t ready when they got here (even though EVERYTHING we owned was packed away in plastic bags and moved out to the porch. Apparently there was more to be done. So the landlord gives us a notice the next day saying we didn’t comply with his initial instructions…..there WERE NO INITIAL instructions! If I hadn’t called the manager of the pest control company, we wouldn’t even have known to bag our things up. We never received notice from the landlord (1st attempt) on how to prepare the apartment! Yet he sends us a notice saying "failure to comply with pest control instructions for the removal of bedbugs" Can he do that? He gave us notice that if we don’t comply with his "2nd attempt" (the first notice we have received) that we would be in breach of our lease and basically be evicted. I am no idiot. He didn’t send initial instructions. And there are NO other notices on file regarding this-I asked the office person. They said all they had was the notice he gave saying he received our 7 days notice and then this "2nd attempt" there is no 1st attempt on file. We want to leave on account of HIS breach and now he is saying we are breaching. HELP! I have already had to call the health department over other issues over here and I am going insane being bitten every night. He said it is our fault and we will pay for it and is just plain giving us a hard time!

Edited on: Sunday, February 17th, 2013 12:18 am

One Response to “Landlord trying to evict us for noncompliance with…nothing.”

My response: (We welcome stories, examples, explanations, answers and a touch of your personality)
 

Jeff

February 18th, 2013 7:09 pm

Were the notices you received from the landlord hand delivered or mailed?If they were mailed, you should be able to retrieve proof from the post office. If there wasn’t any proof then you have proof that it was never mailed out by your landlord. At this point, call your landlord or talk to him personally to settle the issue. Anyway, the second attempt is only telling you that if the inspection still doesn’t push through because the apartment is unprepared then that’s the breach of agreement. I guess the landlord has to pay every time the pest control company comes out. So clarify with your landlord regarding the first attempt letter. For all you know, it could be an honest mistake. In any case, you can always file a formal complaint with the RPA.


Close


Yes, the RPA® Can Help You!

Filing an official complaint is the nation's fastest way to solve tenant problems.

Not Ready? Learn more...

Virginia Complaint Filling Deadline  Tips/Suggestion

Need Help Filing Your Complaint?

Agents Available Mon- Fri 10am to 10pm

Recently Resolved Complaints:

See how the Nation's Rental Authority has helped thousands of tenants already!

Ask Question:

Post a new question to the RPA Tenants rights forum.

You Have Tenant Rights.
Recently Posted Questions:

Over 4,000 questions have been asked by tenants including these new posts:

Tenant Rights Categories

Popular categories about renters rights.