Is there any more frustrating experience than a bad landlord?

And getting short-changed by one can feel like highway robbery.

This is a story of beautiful, petty revenge against just that sort.

Bag of nails

I am a dry liner, which means i do a lot of moving around for my trade as most of the work i do is towards the end of most projects. This means that i spend a lot of my time renting flats and houses for only short periods, usually about 6 months at a time. this has meant that i have had to deal with a lot of landlords over the years both good and bad.

When it comes to the bad landlords i will normally just walk away and get on with moving to the next job and take the loss of my deposit and never use them again if i am working in that area in the future, but this particular landlord got my back up so badly i was not just going to just walk away.

OP sets the stage – London, working on Wembley Stadium! He promptly went to set up housing for his stint on the project.

I had managed to get myself onto a big job in London working on the new Wembley stadium so decided i would look for a house to rent rather than a flat as i know i was going to be working on it for a while and found a reasonably priced (for London) house to rent from a private landlord in a local newspaper.

I gave him a call and meet with him later that day (he seemed ok) went to view the house, paid him the deposit (cash) and moved in that weekend.

I ended staying in the house for nearly a year with no problems. Always had the rent paid into his bank account on time and fixed any small problems that might crop with the house myself without bothering him.

Up to the time when it came to moving out only ever spoke to him twice on the phone after there was an issue with the heating that i was unable to fix myself and he sent an engineer round the next day to fix the boiler.

Sounds like the ideal tenant; pays on time, kept the unit in better repair than he found it.

Fast-forward, and it’s time to move to the next job.

Come the time that the job was finishing i went round to the pawnshop that he owned to give him notice that i would be moving out the following month and to let him know that i was happy for him to come round to inspect the house before i moved out so that i could get my deposit back from him when i returned the keys.

He never came round while i was in to inspect the house and so i assumed that he had come round and let himself in while i was at work as i had told him that i had no issue with him doing that if need be.

So on the day i moved out i went around the shop and handed him his keys back and asked for my deposit.

His response was “what deposit?”

I replied, “the month’s rent that i gave you in advance of moving in as a security deposit.”

He then told me he was keeping that to cover the cost of repairing damages caused while i was living in the property.

I responded “what damages?”

With the bits of work and decorating i had done on the house it was in a better state now than when i have moved into it.

The landlord then got physical.

His response was to step forward and get right up into my face and say “you’re not getting it back so **** off” and he then gave me a shove which needed me to take 3 steps back to avoid falling on my rear end.

Now i am what you would class as average size and build and this landlord had a good 4 inches on me height-wise and obviously spent some time down the gym and the wise move would be to back away and cut my losses.

That was not smart.

Now before i was a builder I was a member of the British army in a regiment called The Royal Green Jackets and they had trained us that the best way to proceed when confronted with aggression is to meet it swiftly and with much more violent aggression.

So without even thinking about it i started to move forward with the full intention of dropping this idiot quickly and painfully.

After the first step though a thought popped into my head like a bolt from the blue.

So i stopped and took a moment to examine the idea from a few different angles said “Ok bye” to my now ex-landlord and walked out of his shop.

Ok, time to plan a bit of payback.

What the landlord did not know was that i had had a spare back door key cut when i had lived in the house which i had stashed in my van in case i ever lost the keys so i could still get back in.

So later that evening i let myself back in and decided to stop for one last night before leaving in the morning for my next job which was in Scotland.

I spent the last night in the house carefully removing every bit of wood in there, i took down doors, removed skirting boards, banisters, architrave and floorboards being extremely careful not to damage anything.

I also completely dismantled all the kitchen units, took up the wood flooring and carpets. i then left everything in nice neat piles in each room.

I got in my van the next morning and was preparing to start my drive when i decided i wanted to rub a little more salt into my ex landlords wounds.

So i stopped at his shop on the way out of London, got a spare hammer, screwdriver, bag of nails and box of wood screws out of the back of my van and went into the shop.

My ex-landlord was not there (probably for the best) so i left the tools with his confused-looking assistant and told her to tell her boss “you will be needing these” and left for my drive north.

Driving through Scotland feels gorgeous. But not as gorgeous as it must be with that soul-wide grin.

I had my phone switched off while driving.

A few hours later while i was having a bite to eat in a service station up by Nottingham i decided to switch it back on and was greeted by a string of text messages and some very colorful voice messages which left me chuckling to myself.

I did reply to one of the texts he sent me, the text was “Do you think you’re ******* funny leaving me nails and screws”

I responded “yes”.

We think he took it easy on the bully landlord.

What do the Reddit comments have to say?

One person saw the most massive red flag.

Another Redditor was day-dreaming about even better ways to twist the screw, as it were.

One person had an even more comically insidious idea.

While one commenter explained some pretty key terminology.

That landlord learned a lesson that day:

Don’t mess with the trades.

Want to read another story where somebody got satisfying revenge? Check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.