Imagine moving into an apartment that seems perfect, but then you realize it has a bed bug infestation. Would you tell the landlord, move out, or get revenge?

In this story, one man is in this situation, and he does all three of these things. Thanks to his neighbors and a hard working inspector, this landlord isn’t going to be able to get away with anything!

Let’s read all the details.

Sketchy Landlord Learns Expensive Lesson

I wasn’t the tenant in this story but it was a former roommate of mine and I had a front row seat to the events.

So my friend, let’s call him Paul, returned to my city after living out of state for a year or so. He needed a place to stay while he got himself set up with a job and a new apartment.

I had a spare bedroom so I offered it to him for a cheap price. That way he could be month to month and just move out when he was ready.

He probably stayed with me about six months – found a new job, saved up some cash, and signed a lease on a new apartment.

It seemed perfect.

Everything seemed fine.

Paul liked his new studio apartment in a large apartment building. It wasn’t far from work, near transportation and in an area where he had other friends. Great.

He got all moved in and seemed to be set.

UNTIL…

This is really bad!

He realized the apartment had bed bugs!

He wasn’t there a week before he started finding bed bugs and bed bug bites (of course).

So he did what anyone would do. He contacted the landlord’s office to report the problem and ask about solutions.

The office claimed that had no other reports of bed bugs. They had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe he already had bed bugs when he moved in? You get the idea.

He talked to his neighbors.

Well Paul knew they were lying.

So he started talking to the neighbors on his corridor. And of course he found others were also dealing with bed bugs and that the landlord had given them the same stupid responses.

So Paul decided to do a bit of research to see what options the tenants had.

Turns out they could easily report the problem to the city inspectors and the more reports they got from the same address, the more likely they were to prioritize sending someone to inspect the building.

I’m glad his neighbors helped him out.

Paul put together the info for reporting with suggestions for what to mention and asked his neighbors make reports.

Some of them must have followed through because it wasn’t long before Paul was contacted about the issue.

He had bagged up all of his stuff and returned to my house but still had the lease and keys for the place.

He met the inspector at the building and showed her his apartment. It was clearly infested and there were signs in the hallway.

The inspector was really good at her job.

The inspector turned out to be a young woman who was VERY dedicated to her job. She told the landlord it was their responsibility to cure the infestation.

The landlord wanted to bring in his usual exterminator to treat the apartment and hallway. They tried that but it didn’t fix the issue.

The inspector eventually insisted that they tear out the carpet and sections of flooring where the infestation seemed to be centered. By now the inspector had seen that multiple units were affected so the costs were mounting.

She also discovered that the building hadn’t had a proper inspection in years. The landlord was dodging her and didn’t want to set up a time for her to do a full inspection, of course. LOL

Paul made sure the inspector had as much information as possible.

Well, after he negotiated to get out of his lease, Paul gave the inspector the punch code to the front door AND pointed out several things he thought the landlord was hiding including bed bugs on other floors, malfunctioning elevator, old fire extinguishers, illegal basement level units, improperly stored building supplies, tripping hazard floor in laundry room, damaged walls in corridors…

The inspector called Paul and let him know she had returned to the building on a couple of occassions.

Once she was meeting the building manager. She let herself in a little early and walked up on the manager trash talking her and saying how he didn’t want to be bothered. Hahaha.

Now, it was her turn to get revenge.

The family owned firm that owned that building had several large apartment buildings in the area and the inspector intended to visit them all!

She had already found tens of thousands in repairs for Paul’s buidling that she was insisting the owner make ASAP.

Given how they were operating, I’m sure all of their buildings were in a similar state.

They made an expensive mistake when they tried to ignore Paul!

They really did make an expensive mistake, but it’s good that the inspector is going to make sure they fix every problem.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person is scared of bed bugs.

Everyone likes to see a landlord get what he deserves!

This person knows how horrible bed bugs can be.

This sounds kind of extreme, but it might be true.

Here’s another story about a horrible landlord.

Talk about an awful place to live!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.