When you rent an apartment, it’s normal to pay a security deposit which often equals one month’s rent. In an ideal situation, you get that money back when you move out as long as you didn’t do any damage to the apartment while you were living there.

Unfortunately, that’s often not what happens. Many landlords make up reasons to keep the security deposit, which in turn infuriates the tenants.

Some tenants accept that they won’t get their money back and move on. Others fight for their money. And yet others decide to get revenge.

In this story, the tenant fights for his money, but when that fails, he’s out for revenge. Keep reading to see how he gets stinky revenge on the landlord.

Scumbag landlord can’t smell the fish

A couple of years ago, I participated in a student exchange program in Belgium and obviously I had to quickly find an appartement after my arrival.

I was very lucky and found an incredible offer: a nice big loft with a roof garden, reasonably cheap and very close to my university.

But the rental arrangement was a little shady.

The only downside was that current occupier was not the official landlord: he had a long-term lease but was forbidden by contract to sublet the apartement himself.

He was himself going on a student exchange program and had to quickly find someone to rent his apartmenet (which is how he explained the rent was so cheap).

He seemed like a wealthy, trustworthy guy so I didn’t mind having an “off the books” deal with him.

This ended up being my demise.

The place was not exactly in pristine condition.

When I moved in, the apartment was not in excellent condition.

He basically left the apartment as anyone who leaves for a long trip would have: dishes stowed away and no laundry on the floor but otherwise not cleaned up.

All the utilities were included in the rent, which was a big plus for me considering that it was January and electricity prices in Belgium are pretty high.

The central heating was broken, but the landlord was “kind enough” to buy me two small electric heaters that I could use in the living room and in my bedroom.

Here are some more details about the rental agreement.

Strangely enough, my landlord had some kind of defect / disease which stopped him from having a sense of smell (he warned me his girlfriend would be able to smell if I had smoked in the apartment).

I never smoked in the apartment (although I am a big smoker) because the landlord told me he was very opposed to smoking.

As is customary in many European countries, he had asked for a deposit of around 1600 euros (2 months’ rent) to be paid back in full on the condition that there were no damages.

Although not in a written contract, I still give him the deposit because he left all his appliances (including CD / DVD collection and speakers, furniture, television, consoles, etc.) which I considered to be collateral.

Everything seemed fine the whole time OP was renting the apartment.

As months went by, I paid my rent to his mother (still in Belgium) on time, had a great time and did no damage to the apartment.

I had a minimal but courteous email relationship to the landlord, which never complained about anything I might have done.

The landlord came back a couple of days before I was preparing to move out. He came to visit the apartment and check for damages and I was expecting him to hand me a brown envelope with the 1600 euros he owed me after he had noticed there were no damages whatsoever.

The landlord has very high expectations.

When he entered he had a clearly fake and exaggerated disgusted look on his face.

He explained that the apartment was dirty and that I needed to clean it before I received the money (which was not part of our verbal agreement).

Mind you, I had cleaned the apartment entirely to the best of my capabilities and to an extent any landlord would have found more than reasonable.

He proceeded to show me all the wall stains (almost all of them already there), dust under the oven (yes, under the oven), rust on some pipes under the sink, etc. Basically, he wanted me to clean the apartment as if he was about to sell it and, remember, the apartment was definitely not cleaned when I moved in.

It was humiliating.

He offered to pay and go get some cleaning products for me, which he would bring back shortly.

I assumed he would also help me clean with his girlfriend, but nope. He came back and basically ordered my girlfriend and I around like maids while he and his girlfriend were doing nothing.

This was, still to date, the most humiliating frustrating experience of my life.

I knew that I had to obey his commands because I would never get my 1600 euros back if I didn’t. I probably could have legally challenged him somehow but I was leaving the country a few days later and I preferred to swallow my pride and move on with my life.

But he found another excuse not to pay up.

Scumbag landlord, after 2-3 hours, seemed pleased with my work and instructed me to meet him at a café the next day to hand over the cash.

I arrived at the meeting early the next day, hungover as hell, ready to get my cash and get the hell out of Belgium (my flight was the next day).

He did not have the cash with him.

After I left the day before, he had called the utility company and realised that he had an outstanding statement of around 2000 euros. Apparently those little electric heaters consumed energy like crazy. I could / should have anticipated this, but as the utilities were “included” and I had never through of checking the evolution of my electricity consumption on the meter (which I had to unscrew a plank of wood to access anyways).

He actually wanted OP to pay him!

Scumbag landlord, after having made me clean his apartment like a little crazy, was asking for the 400 euros I owed him.

He himself had always paid the utility from the central (gas) heating and did not anticipate a rise in electricity bills after giving me the two electric heaters.

That son of a gun was even threatening to show up at the airport the next day and stop me from leaving if I didn’t!

After myself calling the utility company, we went together to their offices and realised the balance was actually something around 1400 euros (not the landlord’s mistake). I only received 200 euros in return.

He really, really wanted to get revenge.

I had never been so furious in my life and could barely stop shaking for the next hours. I wanted so much to get revenge, but I only had one night left in the apartment.

I was also legitimately scared that he would show up at the airport (I should mention that he was a big guy and a Muay Thai fighter).

I had to somehow delay the effects of the revenge so that they would be only noticeable after I was gone. This excluded the obvious damages to the property, which was my initial idea.

That’s when all the pieces fit together in my mind and my evil plot was hatched.

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Oh wow. This revenge is intense!

After sharing the idea with my girlfriend, we went to the nearest fish store and bought something like 10 euros worth of fish leftovers usually purchased to make fish stock or soup (my best estimate is something like 2-3 kilos of fish bones, etc).

For the next couple of hours, I blended the fish with a lot of water, cived out the chunks, and filled up spray bottles with a murky but very liquid fish mixture.

I sprayed that fishy water everywhere, but I really mean everywhere. Under the over, behind the furniture, on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, between the drawers of his desk, under his mattress and even on the clothing he had originally left in storage when I moved in.

There is no way he could smell the fish, and he probably would not have received complaints from the neighbours until they were rotten and stinking out the whole building.

OP can only guess what happened next.

To this day, I do not know how my fishy revenge turned out.

I can only imagine that his friends told him he smelled like garbage and/or that his apartment smelled of rotting sea creatures, by which time it would have been too late to reverse anyways.

It probably cost him a lot of money to professionally clean his house and I sincerely hope he is still paranoid about smelling like fish but nobody wants to admit it to him.

I have read stories when disgruntled tenants hide fish or other meat in an apartment before leaving, but fish water is a new one! That’s definitely some stinky revenge!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a group of students forced to clean the lab for a visit who decided to make things as memorable as possible.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This sounds even worse!

Another person would’ve placed an ad.

This person would’ve contacted the landlord’s landlord.

Here’s some good advice.

I almost forget that the landlord was renting the apartment from someone else. I feel bad for the landlord’s landlord if he ends up being stuck with a fishy smelling apartment when the landlord in this story moves out. He didn’t do anything to deserve this stinky revenge.

It’s too bad OP doesn’t know what ended up happening afterwards. It would’ve been interesting to have a friend try to follow up somehow.

At least OP was able to get his revenge and get out without having to worry about any payback drama.

Attacking the sense of smell might be the worst revenge of all.