Ever since moving out of our last house, I have had a sneaking suspicion that we would never see the remainder of our $1000 damage deposit again. After finding out that our landlord at our last house had purchased that home from a real estate con artist and had financed 100% of the purchase price, we knew we would have to move (this was back in September of last year). We negotiated a lower rent, and asked for $1000 of our $2000 damage deposit back. We assumed (correctly) that if our landlord was in financial dire straits, our chances of getting the damage deposit had taken a hit.
In any case, we moved out. After speaking with Mario (old landlord), we learned that carpet cleaning and other touch ups had cost about $200. Since we moved out in November, I began calling Mario in December to see when he was going to give us our $800 back. Let me say that Mario isn't a bad guy - he just has met with some tough times, and hasn't been very helpful in the process of trying to reclaim the deposit. At first, everything sounded ok - "I'll send you a check" Mario assured me. When it became obvious that no check would be coming, he admitted that he didn't have any money to pay me back with. He also said that some lady had hit him on the freeway, and most of our conversations revolved around the vain hope that State Farm would soon be sending him a big check. These conversations were not helped by the fact that Mario's english isn't that great, and my Spanish is non-existent. Since I had no way of knowing whether he was being straight with me, I resorted to calling him on a daily basis. If I called Mario 10 times, I would get through to him maybe once. Finally this week I happened to chat with Mario's wife, who said I should come over to their house on Thursday to collect the deposit. Thankfully, I think she put her foot down and told Mario that he had to give me back the deposit. Anyway, I drove over there at the appointed time and picked up our $800 (cash). Mario's wife was nice, and thanked me for waiting to get the deposit back (I had told Mario on numerous occasions that I could give him time as long as he could tell me when I would be getting the deposit back).
Unfortunately, the $800 which I had spent months trying to reclaim only spent about 40 minutes in my pocket (no, Dad, my money was not burning a hole in my pocket). Our friendly neighborhood mechanic's sixth sense (which most mechanics are blessed with) told him we would be coming into a sum of money. So, on my way home I stopped at the auto repair shop to pick up our Odyssey, which had A/C and brake problems fixed to the tune of $750.
While driving on the freeway this week, it occurred to me that I find it hard to resist the urge to put a face to a bumper sticker. For example, I want to see what the person looks like who put the "Republicans for Voldemort" sticker on her car. I also find it hard to resist glancing at:
- Aggressive drivers (to confirm that they do indeed look like jerks)
- Drivers of insanely expensive cars like bentleys, rolls royces, ferarris, etc. (to confirm that they do in fact look like elitist rich types).
Maybe I'm the only one that has this problem.
