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Imagine moving into an apartment and burning a candle or some incense. What would you do if your next door neighbor told the landlord you were smoking even though you weren’t? Would you explain what the smell actually was, or would you simply stop burning anything in your apartment?

In this story, one couple is in this situation, and they did both. Now, they make a point to not even light a candle so they don’t upset the neighbor.

However, it’s not working. The neighbor is still accusing them of smoking in their apartment when they’re not.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Neighboring unit keeps making false smoking claims to my landlord

So me and my girlfriend just moved into a house which is separated into two units. The garage and a room in the house as one and the main entrance with two rooms as another unit.

Both are completely separate and have their own entrance.

We are Unit A residing in the unit with the front yard.

Recently our neighboring unit (unit B ) has continuously made false accusations to our landlord of us smoking cigarettes and marijuana in the unit.

They were really burning sage.

The first complaint we realized it was due to us burning sage and palo santo when first moving in.

Our landlord contacted us that the neighbor had complained of cigarette smoke.

We immediately apologized and never burned sage, incense, candles or anything of the sorts as we are trying to be good tenants and respectful neighbors.

I wonder what the neighbor is smelling.

Another week later our landlord called us telling us the neighbors smelled cigarette smoke again.

We were confused as we stopped burning any time of harsh smelling items.

Maybe a week and a half later our landlord called my gf (she’s out of country) and informed her that our neighbor had made a complaint of marijuana smoking coming from our unit. Which is unusual because I had just gotten home from a lengthy commute.

My gf followed up with a text message to our landlord stating we do not smoke in our unit and even stopped burning candles and incense since the first report. Also, we hope that this harassment of complaints doesn’t continue every time our neighbor smells any type of smoke smell.

He’s wondering what to do.

Any idea how to handle this situation ?

I am a student at a local college and my gf is a nurse. We are not loud people and have not even hosted any gathering of sorts at our place. We are taken back by the negativity of our neighboring unit.

I do worry that our landlord will receive us as “negative tenants” if they continue to make false claims of us smoking in our unit.

The neighbor must be smelling something else or smoke coming from somewhere else. If they could figure out what he is actually smelling (which they probably won’t be able to do) that would solve the problem.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

Here’s an interesting idea.

This idea might work.

Documentation is key.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a landlord who is confused about how to return a despot since the tenant doesn’t ever want to contact them again.

Yikes! One person learned a lesson the hard way.

it would be really frustrating to be accused of doing something you’re not doing. Hopefully this advice helps this couple prove that they’re not smoking. It sounds like they are really trying to be good tenants and considerate neighbors. I do wonder if the neighbor is actually smelling something or if he’s just being annoying.