You don't pay, I take your stuff

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A fun letter to stupid roommate from last week (I'm never renting to someone under 25 again. The note to readers at the end is more fun than the actual letter):

Here’s where we stood:

You have decided to stop paying your bills like you agreed to. You did not mail us a check like you told me you would on January 4th when I spoke to you by phone.

You have refused to answer or return almost ten calls from me regarding the matter. You have refused to respond to every text message from both F.H. and myself. You have also refused to read our myspace messages to you, even though your login dates show you are aware of them.

Here’s where we stand now: You still owe us money. In fact, you now owe us more money than before. And we expect to receive this money. Although you refuse to explain why you won’t pay us this money, an explanation no longer matters. I could speculate that you decided to quit paying us since you don’t ever stay in the house in which you agreed to rent a room. Whatever your reason, the reason doesn’t matter. You are allowed to stay wherever you want - you are technically an adult and you already have two parents, that‘s really none of my concern.. What you aren’t allowed to do is not pay people for things you agreed to pay them for. You don’t get to change an agreement midstream - especially without the consent of the other people involved in the agreement; because doing that would ruin the whole concept of an agreement since we never agreed to your sudden non-payment of bills. If you feel that you don’t have to pay for bills because you don’t stay here that much, I would counter with the fact that we would have rented the room to a different person who would be here to assume one-third of the utilities if you had told us that - but you didn’t tell us that. So this argument is dead in the water.

Here’s where we stand even beyond now: Since you won’t contact us, we have had to make a plan for you without communicating with you (since you have decided to avoid us.) First, I’ll even tell you what leverage you have.

What you have: You don’t have a clear legal obligation to pay us. Why? Because we were silly enough to trust you to pay your bills with no written agreement and no lease. Putting me even further in the hole, is that I covered your deposit and said to you, “Just pay me when and if you can.” We don’t need to cover the deposit issue since it doesn’t pertain to your unpaid bills. I just wanted to make a note of how we’ve been more than good to you before this still-unexplained 180 you’ve pulled on us. So you don’t really have to pay us. But a person of their word would pay us. (Note; I said “clear legal obligation,” because verbal agreements of up to 500 dollars are binding in North Carolina. If you want to say in court that you didn‘t make these agreements, then take your chances against perjury charges.)

What we have: We don’t have a legal obligation to let you set foot on this property. You never signed a lease to be a resident here. On top of not paying your bills, you didn’t pay me the full agreed-upon rent for the month of January of this year (You shorted me $50 dollars.) I have made consultations about what I can legally do to recover the money you owe me and F.H.

The is what we can do and this is also what we have done: We have changed the locks on the door. Anything short of full rent is the same as not paying the rent at all. At this time and for the indefinite future (depending on how this matter gets resolved) you are not allowed on this property. If you try to get in the house or even set foot in the yard, I will have you charged with trespass. I will treat you the same way I would treat a strange man trying to break in my windows. If you contact me and agree to show up to pay your bills, that is a different story, I would work with you on that. I don’t like what we had to do, but it’s the only recourse for collecting due payment from you.

Our leverage: We have your possessions in the house. Until we are paid, these things will remain in the house. I don’t want to take your stuff, I don’t want to sell your stuff, and I want you to have your stuff. But legally, you aren’t a resident here, and your things will remain here until we receive our money owed to us. Simply: You want your stuff? Then pay your bills.

I hate that it’s come to this. I hope you will get in touch with us and pay your bills. I don’t even care about this being personal. I will worry later about how and why I may have lost a friend, but emotions will get in the way of handling a business agreement, so I won’t harp on about how and why you didn’t pay me money you said you would pay during a time when I told you I would have to make difficult financial arrangements on myself if you didn’t. You didn’t. And you didn’t bother to tell me, but all of that is for a later time. We just want our money. Here is what you owe now.

You owed me 187 last time we spoke. (That was137 in bills and 50 of unpaid rent.) Now you can add 63 for gas and 37 for internet. Plus 23.45 for the new lock set I had to buy. (I only had to buy it due to your actions, so it is your responsibility.) That’s a grand total of 310.45 you owe me.

As for F.H., she just informed me that you owe her not 26, but now 56, since we got a new bill. That’s a total of 56 you owe her.

Just so you know, if you end up not paying me, I just had to tell F.H. that I’d have to collect half of your unpaid debts from her that I already paid. Although she completely understood that, it is an uncomfortable reality that your actions have caused.

Call us, e-mail or text us. Ultimately, help us resolve this. The only thing that we haven’t made a clear decision on is that you did agree to give us one month’s notice before ceasing rent payments, which you haven‘t done yet. We will cover that after we cover the bill situation. Not paying people for a house that has all your stuff in it probably wasn’t the most intelligent move.

Thanks,

R.W.-----------------------------------------------------



(By the way, readers: We will be auctioning her stuff next month if you want a camera, a bed, a computer, and lots of furniture. There's also a cool hat rack that looks like a skinny English man trying to attack from around the corner. I know girls love hat racks. That will probably fetch more than the computer. If there are any creepy men out there, I'm sure there are some panties I can sell you if you want to sniff them, you sicko. What did your parents do to make you that way. Five dollars extra if they have period on them. Your the sicko, I'm the capitalist. )