The Brotherhood of the Traveling Refrigerator

When we rented this house, owner told us, “The refrigerator came with the house when I bought it. It works great except the front water and ice dispenser don’t work but I’m going to replace the refrigerator before you move in.” My husband asked, “Well when you do, please replace it with a side-by-side like this one.” Owner agreed.

But, a week or two before we were to move in, owner said he had a hernia. Thus, many things were left undone. Owner left the house in a filthy mess, left us with rooms full of furniture he asked us to sell for him, and he had not replaced the refrigerator.

It wasn’t long before we noticed that food was not cold on the refrigerator side. The freezer side seemed okay. But food spoiled very fast, despite our turning the control to the coolest setting. At this point, the cost of spoiled food was shameful. My husband had to work with owner for well over a year to get him to finally replace the refrigerator. He did not replace it with the side-by-side model he promised. Owner, being somewhere up north, asked us to run around to Sears, Home Depot, Lowes and other stores to get him best price and select a model. We invested a great deal of time and gas in doing so and selected a low priced side-by-side. Shocked, delivery came by one day with  a model nowhere close to being a side-by-side. It was the least expensive refrigerator on the market, which had a freezer at the top and was so much smaller, that the food we did have in the old one couldn’t fit into the new one. All that waiting, and time and gas we wasted running around to do his property management to be slapped in the face with this.

Upon installation of the new refrigerator, installer tells us that there is an icemaker in the freezer that we will not be able to use because the line behind the refrigerator looks to have been rusted for years and is completely broken off! My husband tells owner, and, of course, it is never repaired because owner cannot come down to attempt repair himself and don’t even suggest having a repairman come because that would be out of the question.

Now, what to do with the old refrigerator?

Owner did not take care of the old refrigerator removal. And, of course, no charity wanted it because the icemaker did not work. Since the new one was too small for some of our freezer items, my husband and I decided to keep the old one in the garage temporarily and use the freezer side since that still seemed to work.  We were able to get a few months out of the freezer side until Hunters Creek had its community garage sale when we rolled it out onto the driveway and put a big “FREE” sign on it.

The guy next door comes over laughing, “I see you’re finally getting rid of my old refrigerator. That thing hasn’t worked for years, since I hauled it out to the curb and your landlord pushed it over here!”

With our jaws on the ground, the journey of the traveling refrigerator was unveiled to us. Years and years ago, the guy next door was getting rid of this refrigerator because it did not work. Our landlord pushed it from this guy’s house to his house, despite this guy telling him that the thing did not work.

Now, all the pieces of landlord’s lying puzzle fit. That’s why there were only a few condiment jars in it when landlord first showed us the refrigerator, and he had laughed it off as, “Well, you know how it is with single guys in the house.”

The wasted time, the wasted food and the wasted money we endured!

When I finally brought this incident up to landlord this year, his response was, “Okay! So I lied! So I’m a bad person. So what!”

Where’s Tom Sawyer when you need him

Hurricane Katrina had greatly damaged the fence that offered privacy between the property we were renting and the property behind. After years of coaxing with owner, little did we know that when finally the fence would be removed that it would be several more years before landlord/owner would replace it. So here is a photograph of what we lived with interim to getting that new fence. After years of waiting, battling with owner, and my husband negotiating with neighbors on behalf of lazy landlord who clearly had zero negotiating skills, the new fence was finally in place.

Now the month-to-month battle to paint it. I offered on several instances to paint the fence as I had experience working on a farm in doing such work. Owner wanted it done for nothing apparently, because he repeatedly declined. Instead, he enlisted, or coerced, his inexperienced and indifferent twin to take a stab at it

What a disaster!

These represent just a small sampling of photographs of the slapdash hack job that was done by owner’s twin.

As with everything else over the years, owner knew it all, never taking one word of advice on how to do anything properly. In short, after nearly a year, the fence remains half-painted on one side, and not painted at all on the other. The one side that was attempted is so badly painted, a blind one-armed monkey would have done a finer job. I don’t know how the Hunters Creek Homeowners (or Homeogres, as many residents term it) Association allows this to slide so long, without fine or action.

Strangle a Penny

A chain of pool supply/repair stores in Florida is called “Pinch a Penny.” Owner of this house should open his own pool DIS-repair establishment called “Strangle a Penny.” His modus operandi is to meddle, interfere, delay and in any way negatively impact until his “penny wise, pound foolish” methodology turns his penny backwards, forwards, upside down and inside out, making someone spend quite a penny for his negligence.

I engaged several professionals, all of whom, after trying to stop from laughing, gave great insight into the many problems. Aside from the pump leaking, and tape of some sort holding the apparatus together, the meter reading between 50-60 instead of between 10-15, all professionals agreed that the owner had no knowledge or ability to appropriately repair the pump. One serviceman relayed, “The part to fix this is actually inexpensive. It’s a real shame, but I see this all the time with cheap landlords who think they can do it themselves.”

I don’t have a problem if someone is incapable of doing repairs. I don’t even have a problem if someone is more than parsimonious. But I do have a problem when that person makes me pay, and pay much, much more than should be, due to his lying and negligence.

After eight weeks of lies, delays, and his being unable to fix it, he finally admits partial responsibility that he didn’t seal it properly and that he broke something on it. But that did not stop him during or even thereafter from badgering me to have costly pool maintenance done, now that the pool is a swamp, while he continues to delay and play. In his attempt to still cover up his mistakes, landlord took it upon himself to padlock the pool timer box and run the pool filter 24 hours a day on my electricity dollars.

One man’s journey from miser to liar to thief.