Final Charge Of Cleaning After Move Out! (apartments, lease, tenant)
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These are cleaning charges for unclean carpet and some other stuff that were dirty.
I was not there with the inspector.
I guess I have no choice but to pay right or else it would be reported to the agency. The total charges were like $300. But they substracted from my $175 deposit.
I got scammed for a b.s. $50 cleaning fee. I offered to pay half and they refused, so I said "fine, you will get nothing" and they put it on my credit report. I didn't care because I was living on credit thanks to divorce, and I filed for bankruptcy the next year and included the b.s. cleaning fee in my petition. They really did get nothing and I hope they're sorry trying to be greedy.
Unless you are in a situation like mine and you have a good credit rating to protect, you have no choice but to pay the scammers. Be sure to give them a bad rating on apartmentratings.com, which is what I did when they scammed me.
edited to add: if the cleaning fee is not b.s. then why would you even consider not paying?
Why were you not present for the final inspection? Did you do everything required for move out cleaning? The charge seems very reasonable to me if all that needed to be completed was a carpet cleaning and some additional house cleaning. I have done many many final inspections, and it is surprising what some folks' perception of "clean" is. Mine is, that there is no dirt present.
Why were you not present for the final inspection? Did you do everything required for move out cleaning? The charge seems very reasonable to me if all that needed to be completed was a carpet cleaning and some additional house cleaning. I have done many many final inspections, and it is surprising what some folks' perception of "clean" is. Mine is, that there is no dirt present.
The thing is that the property is not mine so why should I have to pay for it?
I don't own that carpet. On top of this I had been living for the past 4 years and I had never been late on any of my bills. Either it was early or on time. I don't think most tenants have a history like mine.
The thing is that they would have cleaned my carpet professionally if I had renewed my lease. That sounds like a scam to me.
Cmon now, if you put furniture there for a while, its gonna be dirty when you move out after 4 years.
Normal wear and tear on a carpet should not be charged to the tenant. It might depend on the lease and maybe state law.
The b.s. cleaning fee I was charged was "justified" by pointing out a light stain on the inside of the microwave door (that's normal wear and tear; I can't return the thing to its brand-new condition!) and the same with the back of the toilet.
I know we're expected to clean, but we can't return everything to its pristine, brand-new condition. Having to replace things that wear out, like a microwave (if included) or the carpet, is part of the cost of doing business as a landlord, and it irks me when landlords try to pass on that cost to the tenant to replace something that would not have been replaced had the tenant stayed!
Location: Sometimes Maryland, sometimes NoVA. Depends on the day of the week
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Texas User
The thing is that the property is not mine so why should I have to pay for it?
The property is not yours, true. But the dirt you left is yours. In fact, a big component of dust is human skin cells. So your dirt is literally you. And your dirt was not there when you moved in, nor should it be there when you moved out.
Normal wear and tear on a carpet should not be charged to the tenant. It might depend on the lease and maybe state law.
The b.s. cleaning fee I was charged was "justified" by pointing out a light stain on the inside of the microwave door (that's normal wear and tear; I can't return the thing to its brand-new condition!) and the same with the back of the toilet.
I know we're expected to clean, but we can't return everything to its pristine, brand-new condition. Having to replace things that wear out, like a microwave (if included) or the carpet, is part of the cost of doing business as a landlord, and it irks me when landlords try to pass on that cost to the tenant to replace something that would not have been replaced had the tenant stayed!
They will give me free shampoo cleaning every year when I renewed my lease but not when I moved out? Why would I pay for the carpet? I paid them rent to use it.
The property is not yours, true. But the dirt you left is yours. In fact, a big component of dust is human skin cells. So your dirt is literally you. And your dirt was not there when you moved in, nor should it be there when you moved out.
I paid rent to use that carpet. The landlord agreed to rent it to me. It should be the landlord's responsibility to clean the carpets. Its business for him/her. It kinda defeats the whole purpose of renting. I should not have to worry about any maintenence.
We rented a home through an agency for a year. Never again! It was agreed upon that steam cleaning the living room carpet would come out of our deposit. We had two toddlers, and there were a few stains that I was not able to get out, so we considered this fair and reasonable. Our deposit had been $800, so we were expecting to get some of that back; we did not know how much a carpet cleaning cost, but we assumed we'd get back at least half.
Instead of the rest of our deposit, we received a BILL for $750! They sent a letter stating that they needed to charge us for the cleanup of a stain on the driveway (???), a screen door that did not close all the way (which we called about two weeks after it was replaced due to a hurricane... it was not hung properly in the first place, but they never fixed it), and 36 hours worth of "miscellaneous cleaning." The house was clean when we left it. I had mopped the floors, cleaned out the appliances, etc.
What I did was send a letter certified mail, and copied to an attorney who happens to be a family member. I wrote that the door was reported as faulty shortly after it was installed, that we were not paying for a mark on the driveway, and that I'd like an itemized bill for exactly what took 36 hours to clean. We never heard back from them, nor did we receive the rest of our deposit. Nothing was ever sent in to the credit bureau.
We are currently renting from a sweetheart of a private landlord. That other experience left a bad taste in our mouth for dealing with rental agencies.
If you rented a clean (not dirty) apartment with clean carpets, you are expected to leave the apartment & carpet clean (not dirty) as well. Normal wear & tear is not the same as "clean". You stated that you left the apartment with unclean carpets & other things dirty - did you receive a dirty apartment? Or was it clean? Kind of like renting a car with 1/2 a tank of gas. You're expected to return it with 1/2 a tank of gas. If you return it with less, you get charged.
I've never been charged for carpet steam-cleaning in rental apartments. If I recall correctly, my leases stipulated that I would be charged if the carpets were beyond the normal wear & tear expected from a rental.
When I rented as a dog owner, I made sure to have the carpets steam-cleaned myself before I moved out. With our last rental, we also had the carpets steam-cleaned ourselves because of wheelchair marks & 2 active crawlers/toddlers. In both cases, we received our full deposits back along with personal phone calls from the land lords thanking us for being such good tenants. Considering that the carpet cleanings cost $50-100 and our deposits were over 1k, spending the $100 was well worth it especially since we knew the carpets had received more than your basic wear & tear. We figured better to spend the hundred bucks than get embroiled in phone calls, letters, more negotiations, etc.
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