Privacy is something most people expect when they rent a place to stay. That’s especially true when they’re spending months there and have already built a good relationship with the owner over several years.

This couple had rented the same beachfront condo for three straight years without any issues.

Then they arrived one year and discovered cameras inside the unit.

They quietly took them down and went on with their vacation. However, that decision seemed to change everything.

Soon the landlord was telling stories about them to other residents and making the entire situation far more uncomfortable than it needed to be.

Read on to see what happened.

AITAH for taking inside cameras down at my 3 month rental in Cancun?

My husband and I rented a beachfront condo for three months, for the last three years, and everything had been totally fine.

We got along well with the owners, and we never had a single issue. They were happy and we were happy. Up until this last year, we always got our security deposit back and always left it cleaner than when we arrived, having taken care of it as if it were our own.

This year, upon arrival, we discovered two cameras on the inside of the unit. One was mounted on the ceiling in the kitchen, and the other was in the living room hidden behind a lamp on a side table.

Understandably, they worried about being watched the rest of their stay.

My husband immediately took them down, and put them in a drawer, then went out and purchased a camera detector to search the rest of the three bedroom, three bathroom condo.

We were worried that there would be more hidden in the bedrooms or bathrooms, which we did not find, but we weren’t sure if we just couldn’t find them or if there weren’t any more hidden. It made us nervous and wary that they were watching us for the rest of our stay.

The landlord never acknowledged to us that the cameras were removed, and we didn’t call him about it. We just removed them and went about our business of having our vacation, always worried in the back of our minds, that we missed a camera or two and were being watched.

Then, the landlord decided to badmouth them to people.

He subsequently went around the pool area for our entire stay and even long after our stay, bad mouthing us behind our backs to our friends, trying to discredit us, and started making up negative, hurtful stories about us.

He made it very uncomfortable for us, but in my mind, he was way out of line by secretly putting these cameras up and making us feel like we couldn’t be trusted, when we’d never had any issues in the past three years.

We won’t be going back to rent from him again, and we were able to get a different unit from a different landlord in the same building, but were we wrong for removing these cameras and feeling upset about it?

AITA?

Eek! Finding hidden cameras is enough to make anyone uncomfortable.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think.

This reader thinks they may be able to get refunded.

According to this comment, they should contact the police.

For this reader, the landlord is in the wrong.

Yet another person who mentions legality.

Honestly, this would have been enough to make most people find somewhere else to stay.

After all, nobody wants to spend months wondering whether they’re being watched every time they walk through the living room.

Then, instead of handling the situation like an adult, the landlord apparently decided to talk about his longtime renters behind their backs.

Hopefully they look into their options and report what happened if the cameras weren’t allowed. It’s just a shame they didn’t document everything before taking them down.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a family who is resisting pressure from the HOA to remove their tree and lights.