If you’re renting an apartment for college, it’s possible that the length of your lease won’t line up perfectly with the length of the school year. What would you do if you moved out of your apartment early but still had to pay the electric bill until your lease was up?

This person found a way to avoid paying the electric bill, but it really backfired for the property owner!

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Electric Bill still in our name after we move out? I’ll make sure we’re not charged a cent.

We moved out of an apartment 2 months early (school housing contracts, blegh).

Since we couldn’t get anyone to move in for only two months, we were on the hook for the 2 months of rent which was a fortune to poor college students.

We were told by the on-site manager (also a poor college student being paid in free rent) that we’d be responsible for the electricity bills in the apartment over the next two months despite already doing our official move-out.

No, they can’t be changed back to the landlord’s name.

He came up with a plan.

Fine. I’ll pay the electric bills, but I’ll make sure they’re zero.

So when we left I turned off all the breakers.

I still had the keys because we were supposed to mail them back to the property owner (at our expense) since I guess he lives far away and only comes in to town at the beginning and end of each semester.

A few days later we realized we had forgotten some items in the bathroom, and since the apartment was on my way to school I decided to swing by and grab them before mailing the keys back.

He wasn’t expecting this!

When I walked in, I was startled to find someone inside.

It was the property owner with a box of tools looking very dirty.

Apparently the hallway lights weren’t working (and in violation of building safety codes) and he couldn’t figure out why.

The security system also seemed to be non-functional.

It looked like something had tripped all the breakers, he said.

OP explained all the reasons why he didn’t care about the landlord’s problems.

I said yeah, that something was me since the electric bill was still in our name.

He pointed out that not powering the hallway light was a safety concern, and also that having the power off would ruin the refrigerator.

I pointed out that I couldn’t care less about the safety of an apartment I didn’t live in, I already had a signed move-out document saying all the appliances were in good shape, and also that him being there was technically a landlord violation since we were still paying rent and he hadn’t given us notice that he’d be entering the apartment.

They were both contemplating their next move.

We looked at each other for a few seconds.

I was wondering if I was technically trespassing or not since I had already signed move-out documents.

He was probably thinking about how much time he had wasted for something like 13 cents worth of electricity, and how he couldn’t really stop me from simply dropping by any day after school to turn the breakers off again.

The  landlord caved.

Finally he said he’d take the electric bill out of our name.

I grabbed my loofah, left, and didn’t hear anything about it ever again.

Most importantly, I never paid another cent (except, of course, the two months of rent, but small victories!).

That worked out well! Hopefully the landlord will change this policy going forward.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

It does seem like it should be illegal for tenants to pay for the electricity in common spaces.

These are two good points.

This person shares some advice learned from watching TV.

It’d be nice to notify the future tenants about the electricity issue.

This sounds like a horrible way to live.

The landlord learned his lesson!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.