All this.
Even if you had an agreement with the landlord, by your own admission is was only for a fraction of the actual replacement cost. At the very least you should offer to cover half the cost, since it was you who had not bothered to OK the overrun in the first place.
I’ve been screwed by my landlord a number of times. This is why any arrangements I make with him must have a written record. If he won’t write it down, I know he doesn’t intend to live up to his word.
Am I the only one disturbed by the strong emphasis on the ethnicity of the landlord in the OP?
Since she has dismissed the possibility that his poor English/heavy accent contributed to the problem, what difference does it make?
I’m appalled that the OP mentioned that the landlord is a MAN! As a man, I feel that this sort of thing might lead other readers to believe that our entire gender may have a tendency to pull a stunt like this.
Good grief.
Yeah. And, what about the comment that he was “late-middle-age”. How inappropriate was that! I thought that we were beyond that sort of hidden ageist agenda.
Well there are certain foreign-born individuals who, because of the culture where they were reared, never quite caught up with cultural American things. For instance I have had some difficulties with Oriental people, the difficulty being in the way I have to phrase certain questions–because these people, treating me with respect, are simply unable to tell me that I am wrong about something. Now the way they phrase it is not exactly a lie, but it misrepresents the basic truth that I am wrong and gives me the false impression that I am right instead.
I am trying to think of an actual example, but it would probably be too wordy.
So it’s possible something like that was going on, and quite possibly relevant. Note that it was the son, not the parent, who told the OP she had the wrong idea.
Wow. Regardless of the other details, it was badly wrong to drag the plumber into the dispute.
For sure. The person who scheduled the plumber’s work is ethically responsible for paying him. Full stop.
Good grief indeed. If the OP had said “I think the problem may be related to the fact that the landlord’s father is from China, and their cultural norms are different,” (a la Hilarity N. Suze) I’d have no problems with that. What I don’t get is simultaneously referring to someone’s “cute” ethnicity and at the same time going out the way to dismiss language and cultural differences as being a factor. Would you be equally indifferent if she’d mentioned “my landlord, a late-middle-aged black man, but he’s been living with white people for decades so I don’t think his race has anything to do with it”?
I’m going to back off, however. If the OP cares to expound on her reasoning for wording her OP the way she did, fine, if not, fine, and if people want to make sarcastic comments because I was perturbed, I shall read and take note. Regardless, I will shut up now.
This is a relevant detail. In Western culture, when you say “yes”, you mean “yes, I agree with what you are saying”. In some Asian cultures, when you say “yes”, you mean “Yes, I have understood what you are saying”. This is a basic miscommunication that has caused enormous amounts of grief.
It’s possible that both sides believe they are right and the other side is being an obstinate obstacle.
You might be able to ask the landlord for the original $300 which you had verbally agreed upon. I don’t think it’s right to ask him for the extra $180.
crazyjoe is right on every account.
I work with a lot of ESL Chinese people and in some cases “yes” means they don’t understand but don’t want to inconvenience you by asking you to repeat yourself or talk slower.
Your rented a place with the expectation of a functioning dishwasher. It was not functioning.
You made a verbal agreement with an agent of the landlord to permit you to spend up to $300 to replace it with a new one with reimbursement from the landlord upon submission of a receipt.
ERROR: Verbal agreement
You spent over $480.
ERROR: Unilaterally overspending the agreement
You deducted the full $480+ from your rent.
ERROR: Claiming full reimbursement and failing to limit your reimbursement to the authorized amount
Now, the landlord, who didn’t want to pay any amount in the first place, is facing a claim for $480 instead of $300 max. He may have reluctantly paid the claim if you limited it to the contract amount of $300. Instead, he recoils and denies the verbal agreement in its entirety. The landlord’s agent is his relative, so you can guess which way his testimony would go if pressed.
If you go to court, you have a he-said-she-said situation with nothing in writing other than the receipt. The burden is on you to prove up the contract and its terms.
You will argue, “Why would I buy a new machine unless the landlord permitted it?”
The landlord will argue, “Why would I permit the purchase of a new machine when I could just replace the hose or replace the machine with another one I have in storage?”
You see where that is going.
You want to remain on good terms, so coming to an agreement is the best route, especially since going to court looks like it may be a total waste of time for you. You might ask the landlord to honor the $300 agreement and you eat the rest. If you don’t like that one and you take the dishwasher with you when you move out, you may end up with a fight over whether that dishwasher was a “fixture.” Maybe not. Maybe the landlord deducts the “fixture” cost from the security deposit and you are left to fight the landlord over the security deposit refund. Another possible arrangement was suggested by pbbth.
So many landlord-tenant disputes are based upon so-called verbal agreements. Another vote for lesson learned … get it in writing.
Definitely! My friend’s grandma is like this all the time. She smiles and says “Yes.” when she thinks she got the general gist of something when she only really got half of it. In her case though, it has more to do with lousy hearing. In any case, I thought the OP was fine in proactively saying, basically: “Before anyone asks if there was a language or communication barrier. There wasn’t. His heritage is Chinese, but he’s American born and speaks English and he’s not an old doddery guy with poor hearing.” Geez, lighten up Carol!
Anyway, to the OP. My wife’s has a couple of rental properties. If one of our tenants said: “$200 - $300” and then presented us with receipts for $500. We’d be pissed! We don’t give them that opportunity though. We replace appliances ourselves, as soon as they let us know there’s problem. (We recently replaced a water heater.) It prevents abuses like tenants getting unauthorized upgrades and sticking us with the bill.
Shortly after moving into a rental home (like…within one day) I pulled open the silverware drawer in the kitchen and the whole front panel of the drawer fell off in my hand. This was the second, or possible first time I had opened the drawer. I mentioned it to the landlord, (a white, middle-aged woman, same as me!) and she said her dad would be by to fix it. Then she charged me $20 for the repair. When I protested, she said that it wasn’t like that when I rented the place two day before and that I should have noted it on the rental agreement, and that drawer fronts don’t just fall off, and I must have broken it. I should have know this would be a pattern. The house was old and in sad repair under the cosmetic fixes. The bedroom ceiling began sagging and nearly fell in on me, the floor grate in my daughter’s room was held together with twist ties and when one of her friends unknowingly stepped on it, his foot went through the grate and the vent and came out the dining room ceiling. A bird got stuck in a hole in the gutter and died there. The water heater broke and flooded the basement.
I really miss that house.
Not so much. However, were I moderating I’d be appalled at someone mentioning any private person’s real name on an internet board, particularly when it regards disputes.
This obviously may be a pseudonym, but it doesn’t say that.
Despite having said I wouldn’t say anything more about the ethnic reference in the OP, I’m back … but my excuse is that I am retracting my concern rather than returning to argue.
I think my misplaced disturbance was due to two factors:
If I had read more carefully, I might have realized that the OP did leave room for the interpretation that cultural differences might have been a legitimate factor in the dispute, and that was why ethnicity was relevant. I took the comment about “he’s been in the US for decades” as a dismissal of that, whereas in fact she only meant his English is okay.
My feelings are a result of living in Indonesia, where there is a long history of discrimination against Indonesians of Chinese heritage. As the aphorism goes, “Chinese are the Jews of Asia.” In Indonesia, Dutch colonialists encouraged Chinese to be the merchant class - simultaneously keeping economic resources out of the hands of ethnic Indonesians and creating a “divide and conquer mentality.” Long after Indonesia won its independence, ethnic Indonesians resented their Chinese brethren, stereotyping them as money-grubbing and untrustworthy. I could tell you many discouraging stories of open prejudice against Chinese Indonesians. While things are improving somewhat, it will still be a long time before Indonesians whose ancestry is from the archipelago let go of stereotypes and the belief that Chinese cannot be trusted where money is involved.
So, I’m sorry. I guess things are nothing like that in the US, and I reacted based on my horror of INDONESIAN norms, not American. Apologies.
Paraphrasing Mr. Baseball: “‘Hai’ as in ‘Yes, I agree’ or ‘Hai’ as in ‘Yes, I hear you but I won’t do a damn thing’?”
The appliance was so old that it was harvest gold and the cord was corroded. Certainly that gives you sufficient information to realize that the landlord wasn’t a “best appliance for the money” kind of guy.
Secondly, he said he’d credit you $200-300. That, to me, means that he’d credit you $300 MAXIMUM. It doesn’t mean $300 + delivery/installation fee. The fact that you think that you “saved” him from paying a $200 installation/delivery fee (which, by the way, is an OUTRAGEOUS fee for a $280 appliance) is completely irrelevant. You went over the maximum. Your loss.
I agree with other posters who said that you should negotiate with your landlord for the following resolution:
a) You pay 100% for the Whirlpool (!) dishwasher. When you move out, you can take the dishwasher with you.
b) He can credit you $300 on the next month’s rent, you enjoy the Whirlpool dishwasher while you live there, and you eat the $180 that you went over.