Gordaen’s Blog

If you have not learned by now, the world is unfair. It’s not just a little unfair, it’s like playing Pitfall on the Atari with a joystick that only works in one direction using only your feet—while blindfolded. And that’s the lead-in to why apartment deposits are one more way to rip off people who can’t do much about it.

Initial deposits tend to be about $300 around here. Even if half is refundable, you can expect that you’ll have to fight to get that half back:

“Uh yeah, we saw that the door to your bedroom was crooked, so we had to keep your deposit…”

“Even though it was like that when I got here and would have only cost $2 for a new hinge?”

“Yeah, because it will cost you too much to get a lawyer to prove that we are screwing you over.”

When I moved into my apartment, I saw that the floor had been vacuumed (poorly, I might add) and that was about it. One of the closet doors did not move (took a pair of pliers to fix a bend in the track). Several of the power outlets wouldn’t hold a plug-in in place. The washer had a piece broken that kept causing the tub that clothes go into to come off while spinning. The dryer didn’t work well, so I cleaned it out (finding the vent blocked by a dryer sheet covered in years worth of lint) and cleaned out the duct, which had several vacuums worth of dust in it. I cleaned out the back of the refrigerator, because the back was so dusty I couldn’t see any of the actual components (compressor, radiator, etc.).

From what other people have said, this sort of thing is pretty common. I don’t expect perfection, but what does the deposit cover exactly?

The pet deposit is $500… per pet. How does that make any sense? $250 is nonrefundable. One would naturally assume that $250 goes to cleaning the apartment (since it apparently isn’t done with the initial deposit… and I guess the cleaners charge $250 per hour, since that’s as long as it would take to do what they consider “cleaning”), but then what happens when you have two or three pets? Do they clean the apartment two or three times? The nonrefundable part can’t be for damages, because plenty of pets don’t do any damage and it would be illegal to take money under false pretenses, wouldn’t it?

Who am I kidding? The millionaires who own these complexes need every penny they can get! A complex with 140 apartments charging $600 would only bring in a million every year, so they have to take any extra money they can, cutting any extra corners they can…