Lazy Landlady Wanted Tenants To Keep The Utilities In Their Name Until Another Renter Was Found, But They Refused And Shut Them All Off

Jayne Elliott

1 month ago

Source: Reddit/AITA/pixabay/ Sammy-Sander

Moving out of an apartment and into your first home that you actually own is quite exciting.

But what if they person you’re renting from made an unreasonable request?

In today’s story, the landlady of the apartment is making things stressful, and she’s getting particularly nasty about it.

Let’s see how the story escalates…

AITA for shutting off the water and power when we moved out?

So I find myself in a strange situation where I’m unsure if I was TA or not.

My BF (m38) and I (m34) just bought a house together (first time homeowners!!!) and moved in late September.

Now we moved out of a home we had been renting for 15 months. We gave the landlady 3 month notice and our lease would terminate Oct 31. So you see we had a full month of overlap between the 2 houses.

OP had the utilities turned off instead of transferred.

Now the house was bare for all of October and since we were still renting, I had the utilities remain on under my name.

But early October, I set the power and water to be shut off Friday oct 30 (a day early which is partly where I may be TA) because services aren’t turned on/off on the weekends and can potentially take 3 days, which would be Nov 5.

I’ll also point out I told her I had schedule utilities to be shut down and she initially asked me to call and transfer them into her name.

I told her I can’t do that. She has to call. I can’t tell a utility company to send the bills to some random person at another address. She should know that.

OP explains problems he had with the landlady.

Now my landlady is a bad one.

She’s lazy and negligent.

The roof leaks and we were promised a new roof when we moved in last July but never happened.

She left a baseboard off after a bathroom remodel when we moved in which left a sizable hole in that wall that collected water from the shower, leading to mold. Promised to fix this, never happened.

Just examples to show she never follows through with promises.

OP explains how the utility bills are paid.

Now here’s the problem.

I handle all the rent checks and pay the utilities. My BF pays his half, just everything is in my name.

She knows this.

But she has a “friendlier” relationship with BF because they have mutual friends.

The landlady had an unusual request.

She never responds to my texts but does message him occasionally.

Now she made a very unusual request to BF to pass on to me 5 days before official end of lease.

She wanted me to not turn off water and power. No no no. She wanted me to keep them on in MY NAME until a new renter was found and then reimburse me, which I highly doubt would ever happen.

Obviously, there was no way I was doing this. In my mind, all she has to do is call the utilities and have them transferred to her name, but she didn’t do it.

The landlady is really upset.

Anyway, the day came and it gets shut off. Now she has to pay fees to have them turned back on.

She’s angry and thinks I’m TA. She says I should have coordinated better with her, but I think that since she is the landlady, it’s her job to coordinate with me.

I think it’s highly unprofessional and illegal to ask a tenant to retain utilities in their name after their lease is over, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how she handles the deposit return.

So Reddit, AITA?

And either way, how should I have handled this differently?

I think the landlady should’ve handled things differently. Her request was ridiculous.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

Here’s the perspective of a landlord…