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refunded security deposit

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Jack72

Junior Member
North Carolina
I received my security deposit check today minus their deductions and also a bill attached to the check for $94 for a cleaning bill and a flea spray.
1. There is no where on my signed move out instructions that says anything about having to hire someone to do A flea spray so how can I be charged. Plus there weren't fleas.
2. How can they send me a bill? Why wouldn't they remove from security deposit like they did the other deductions??
3. If I don't send payment by date requested what can they do??

Ant help would be greatly appreciated!! I'm very confused by this.
 


FarmerJ

Senior Member
Jack did you have any pets that lived with you or guest pets that could have introduced fleas to the rental ? If so then it may not be unreasonable to charged for that kind of treatment, Your lease doesn't have to say that you can be charged for it , In a way its kind of no different than how it is now for smokers, years ago a lot of landlords and tenants just tolerated and LLs often cleaned every thing up and new paint and maybe primer and that was all they did and then slowly the market changed with more and more tenants being more particular about smoke odors way more landlords especially the ones who were trying to run buildings as smoke free found out its actually not cheap to get rid of smoke odor and now have no problems making claims against tenant deposits to clean it up. But if there is something they charged you for that was not fair and you have proof that you didn't do it like say before and after pics or some other way to dispute thru the courts then your free to do it, Some here will suggest sending a dispute letter to LL via certified mail , It may not be a bad way to go , No one here can see the condition you left the place in so I guess you just gotta weigh it out as to small claims court or not.
 

Jack72

Junior Member
I do understand that.
But why would they send me a bill attached to my security deposit refund check? Why not remove any fees like they did for their deductions? It leads me to believe that they know they can't legally charge me so they are just trying to get me to pay a bill instead.
Am I looking at this wrong??
 

FarmerJ

Senior Member
Your state has not gone as far as some of our west coast states with defining what a LL can fairly charge for , As to why they didn't deduct it , I don't know seems sort of silly to me not to but if you did not have pets then you have something to dispute. (If you had moved into a unit and with in days of being there your pet had fleas like most people you would wonder if the previous tenants pets left some behind and would likely be pretty annoyed about it) If you feel that strongly about the flea treatment and also any other thing they held money back for then consider using small claims court to ask the court to decide the issue.
 

Gail in Georgia

Senior Member
"But why would they send me a bill attached to my security deposit refund check?"

Have you considered contacting your former landlord/management and asking them this?

Gail
 

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