I’m pretty sure once the court sees they held $1400 of my money hostage for five days, they wont have a problem siding with me.
I can’t believe anybody would side with the apartment lady. Wow.
I’m not “siding” with the apartment complex. They have a crappy credit card processing company. From that it does not follow that you have a viable legal case against them.
It’d be nice if someone in the banking industry could chime in and let us know a) if the $1400 was really off-limits to you during those 5 days and b) if it really takes 5 days for an non-charge to clear from your debit account.
To be clear: the apartment complex are dicks because they know they have trouble running charges. I just don’t think you have a case for disputing the late charge.
It seems to me that charging a late fee for payment delivered on time in a manner accepted by the property manager is inappropriate. “oh, I know we said we accept checks, but we’re having issues with them today, so they’re no good. Surprise! You didn’t bring an alternate form of payment? That’ll be $125 for being late.”
Fair enough. I think I do. Mainly because my money was frozen and I couldn’t spend it. I’m not a banker but I can tell you what the customer rep told me at my bank: I can not spend that money that is in pending. It takes three to five business days to drop off as a non charge.
She did tell me that there was some way to have their tech guy and the tech guy at the shady CC service get together on the phone with me and put it back as a non charge. But she also told me I’d have to sign some kind of form and fax it back to them. Which just seemed like a big hassle to me.
Also, one BIG important fact that should be noted: When I told her that I’m not paying anything until those charges come back on my account, she said this was fine (like it was no big deal) and she never said shit to me about I’ll get a hefty late fee if I do.
If you can show that, then you have a decent chance in small claims court. I’d make sure that the paperwork I brought in from the bank was very clear about this.
Just trying to look at it objectively. She has some defenses a judge would take into consideration.
If that’s not in writing, expect her to lie about it in court.
This is something else that could likely be used in her favor in court.. it could be twisted around to look like she offered a solution to you that you refused to take. I agree with you completely in this whole endeavor but I am just trying to be objective as well.
Update: Not sure if anyone cares but I feel compelled to post anyway.
I went above manager lady’s head and sent an E-mail to their corporate office.
Just got a response back today. My son’s apartment has been credited $125 on next month’s rent.
Cool. But they also went on to tell me to please use check or money order in the future. (ok whatever)
Not exactly the win I was looking for but I’ll take it.
Does the lease say what kind of payments are accepted?
While I don’t work for the banking industry per se, I do work for a credit card processor.
Our merchants have the ability to authorize a charge and then capture it at a later date. For example, recently I rented a boat and the marina authorized a kind of deposit in case of damage. If I crashed the boat, the merchant would then capture my $50. Because I didn’t, the merchant just let the auth stand and told me it would disappear in a couple days.
Even though this is a different sort of situation, the concept of the authorization is the same. On occasion, a merchant’s internet connection blinks out, there’s a problem with their software, or there is a setting changed somewhere. When the merchant scanned the card, it sounds as if it merely authorized the card without capturing the funds. In this instance, funds would NOT be accessible to Shakes until that auth “falls off” and clears the system.
Finally, we advise our merchants that authorizations are valid for 7-10 business days. In other words, it will look to the customer as if they were charged for that duration of time until that authorization disappears.
Does it really matter?
The OP turned up to pay the rent, told the apartment manager that he was paying the rent, and handed over his credit card. She did not hand it back to him and say, “Sorry, we only accept checks or money orders.” She took his credit card, and ran it for the amount of rent due.
That suggests pretty strongly to me that credit card is an acceptable method for paying rent.
Thanks. But I infer from Lord Feldon’s post, that if it’s on the lease that I can pay with CC, they have no right restricting me to pay only with check or money order.
@Lord Feldon, I get where you’re going but I’m just ready to put this behind me.
Fair enough. For some reason i took the opposite inference.
I’m on the side of the apartment building here.
And I would bet that they refunded the money out of “good will” rather than because they thought they were at fault.
The manager told Shakes the rent wasn’t paid. End of story there.
As to the “hold” - tough shit unfortunately. If the banks can’t clear it up faster than 5 days, then you have a pretty crappy bankiong system.
No-one’s saying that the rent was actually paid at that time.
What we’re saying is that Shakes made a good-faith effort to pay the rent, using a form of payment that had sufficient funds available, and that was accepted by the manager. The reason that the rent wasn’t paid is that the manager’s equipment fucked up, a contention supported by the fact that, by the manager’s own admission, the same thing happened to other people.
Everyone agrees that Shakes (or his son) had an obligation to make sure the rent got paid, even after the credit card fuck-up. But, given that the cause of the lateness was the manager’s own equipment, charging a late fee was completely unreasonable.
Except that the bank said it was. No way is anyone going to pay the rent three times over then expect assholes like that to refund it. Yes, certainly after the Op cleared up the problem, he had to fork over, but it certainly appears the manager screwed up the transaction.
How was the Op to know the manager wasn’t just going to pocket it then disappear? Sure, after much toil and effort the OP would have been made whole, but a apartment manager stealing from the property owners is hardly new.