They Agreed to Split the Cost of Heating Oil—but Her Neighbor Keeps Finding Reasons Not to Pay His Half
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Imagine living a house that was converted to two apartments, and you have to coordinate with the tenant in the other apartment to pay for heating oil for the converted house so the pipes don’t freeze. What would you do if you bought the oil, but the other tenant kept making excuses to delay paying you back for your half? Would you eat the extra cost, keep bugging your neighbor to pay up, or complain to the landlord?
In this story, one woman is in this situation, and she is definitely not willing to pay the whole bill herself. Dealing with her neighbor sounds really frustrating though. It’s really too bad she’s in this situation at all. Splitting the bill is making her life pretty stressful.
Keep reading for the whole story.
Neighbor owing me money
I moved into my apartment last January. I live in a house on a farm that used to be single-family but was converted into 2 units at some point.
The owner rents it out relatively cheap just to cover the property taxes for the farm itself.
The lease stipulates we are responsible for coordinating and splitting the cost of heating oil with the other unit.
This sounds like a bad start to living here.
When we first moved in, the neighbor (I’ll call him “Goofer”) did not reply when I texted him.
I ended up ordering it myself and it was scheduled to arrive the following week.
In the meantime, the pipes froze and we lost running water.
The plumber told the property manager we were running low on oil and we were blamed.
But there was actually another reason the pipes froze.
The property manager threatened to make us and Goofer pay for any necessary repairs.
The plumber eventually determined the pipes froze because of insulation issues and the age of the boiler.
The property manager did not apologize and continued to harp on our responsibility to keep the oil topped up.
Bear in mind we had moved in 2 weeks prior.
OP never wants to run out of oil again.
It stressed me out enough that I am extremely vigilant about ordering the oil despite Goofer ignoring any attempts at getting him to participate.
My boyfriend ran into him outside, and Goofer claimed the previous tenant on our side ordered it and asked Goofer for his half afterwards.
The next time I ordered it was in September. I texted Goofer after the delivery came and I got the receipt.
He did not reply for several days.
Persistence pays off.
Finally I included the property manager in a group text where I reiterated that I had gotten the bill and needed his half.
He texted me privately saying he didn’t have the cash and would send it next week.
I gave him an extra 2 weeks on top of that and sent a Cashapp request the day I said it was due, and he paid me.
Goofer makes lost of excuses.
This past winter required another delivery which came out to $736. I sent a Cashapp request.
Two days later I copied the property manager on a text asking for Goofer’s half ($368), and texted again a few days later.
Goofer sent a private text saying he would pay me “next week.”
I knocked on his door the day he promised payment and he again said, “I’m low on funds, it has to be next Thursday.”
This sounds really frustrating.
I emailed the property manager who said she sent a direct message.
On Friday, I texted them and Goofer said he was “waiting for some money to clear.”
I texted again on Sunday. He sent me $350.
At this point I’d had enough, sent back the $350, and said I was done chasing him up and would be deducting it from my rent so management could collect it instead.
Really, management should deal with this. It sounds very annoying for the tenants to have to split the bill.
This got management’s attention and she was like, “It doesn’t work that way.”
I said, “It’s not working at all because it’s consistently fallen on me to order the oil, pay up front, and follow up with Goofer ignoring me and lying about when he’s going to compensate me.”
Goofer said I was “making a big deal over a couple of bucks” and that he would have sent me the rest if I just told him.
We’re in our 30s and I’m sick of dealing with this.
There are more reasons she dislikes Goofer.
He also allows his alarm clock to go off for up to an hour and will get up and walk around without turning it off.
Since the latest drama, he’s enabled a feature that also makes it vibrate which is even noisier (my boyfriend suspects it’s out of pettiness).
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He brings women over who stay for days at a time and they are loud at 3am in the morning.
He might work from home.
Based on how often he’s home, he doesn’t appear to be employed.
A couple of months ago, the landowner texted my boyfriend asking if we’d seen Goofer recently because he was trying to get in touch with him. We suspected he was delinquent on the rent.
And today I got a text from the property manager claiming I hadn’t paid the rent.
I sent her an image of my Zelle transactions indicating otherwise. I think she mixed up our apartment units and Goofer is once again goofing.
Yikes! That’s a lot of frustration she shouldn’t have to deal with. Let management pay for the oil and hike their rent payments up a bit to cover it. Then the tenants don’t have to coordinate splitting the bill.
Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.
This is what I think too. She shouldn’t have to deal with this drama at all.
A landlord weighs in.
This person thinks the neighbor will get evicted.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who ends up with a problem of their own after calling the city about a shed.
Another person would’ve kept the money.
I would’ve kept the $350 too as a partial payment. I’d still bug him for the rest. But, it shouldn’t be the tenant’s job to bug the neighbor to pay her back.
Forcing tenants to split bills isn’t working. The landlord should handle this.
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