Imagine moving into a rental house with roommates thinking it’s going to be a great place to live, but after you move in, you notice one problem after another. What would you do if the landlord tried to turn the problems back on you and refused to fix any of them?

In this story, some college students are in that situation, and one of them takes the lead refusing to back down to the awful landlord. Instead, she makes it her mission to make sure any potential renters know about all the problems.

This truly sounds like an awful place to live.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

Revenge on Evil Landlord

When I was in University, I’d heard stories about horrible landlords of student housing but hadn’t experienced it myself…

Until third year, when it felt like we got 3 years worth of bad landlords all in one go.

It began when I heard noises in the wall behind my bed at night, I brushed it off for a while until I realised that it was an animal in the wall.

I told the landlords the next day, and they immediately played dumb, acting as if I was stupid in front of my housemates for suggesting that something could fit inside of a wall.

She knew she wasn’t crazy.

That was the first alarm bell, why immediately try to embarrass me into dropping it?

After explaining that I know what a cavity wall is, she asked if we’d seen anything in the kitchen (oddly specific, we didn’t think about it until later).

From then on her husband delt with us, we weren’t aware that he was our landlord too.

A little time passes, still nothing done about the noise in my wall, not that it was a surprise. I’d worked out by then that it was probably something like a mouse, and that it could run through the terrace of houses, as long as it didn’t chew its way through my wall or die in there I put the whole thing on the backburner.

But then they found out what was in the wall.

Until we were all sat in the sitting room, and heard a thud in the kitchen.

Then squeaking.

There was a giant rat in our kitchen.

The rat disappeared into a hole in the (completely crumbling) kitchen wall and the landlord claimed that we made it up, and that they’d never had a rodent problem (I contacted the previous tenants through facebooking names I found on letters for them that had been posted to us by mistake; the property had had a rat problem for the last 3 years before we moved in at least).

The landlord was sneaky.

I set a rat trap and caught one, took photos, and sent them to the landlord to tell him to sort the problem out.

He told us that because there was a line in our contract about the landlord not paying for pest control (the contract specified wasps nests etc., we didn’t even think about rats when we signed it) that we’d have to pay the hundreds of pounds to fix it.

He’d knowingly written that into our contract so he wouldn’t have to pay out, instead of fixing the kitchen wall and the exterior wall where the rats were getting in.

OP was not about to back down to the landlord.

To cut the rest of the setting the scene part of the story short; we called the council who sent a pest control team, while on their visit one of the men took my housemate to one side and told her that our landlord is evil and he is known for getting nasty.

They told him that it wasn’t our fault that there were rats, it was his, and he screamed in my face until he was bright red about how I was a terrible person and was trying to take him down for no reason (one of my housemates had to leave because she was scared. I wasn’t, we were in a room full of men – who were backing us up – making himself look worse for screaming in my face like that. I’m f and was 22 at the time, about half his size).

He tried to sue us for slander (it isn’t slander if it’s true, so swing and a miss).

Now, for the revenge.

OP knew just what to do!

It was written into our contract that we had to be notified 24 hours in advance if anyone needed access to the house, which included house viewings.

I began my mission; stop any other students from getting stuck in this hellhole.

The house was being shown by agents so it made it fairly easy.

I left the rat traps in prominent places, casually explaining why we needed them if asked, and if I felt I was being too subtle, making a fake show of “oh gosh, please ignore the rat traps! The landlord said he’d fix the kitchen wall where they get in but hasn’t gotten around to it, so we have to catch them”.

She made sure potential renters knew about more than just the rats.

I was honest about the mould problem in the bathroom.

When I found out they were planning on increasing the rent by £100 a month(!) I made a point of saying something like “well, it’s just about worth the [rent I was paying]”.

I made sure to say his name, so they wouldn’t get away with using his wife’s name as a front while his reputation for aggression stayed hidden.

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The agents never said anything to me directly, and because we had to be notified I could always make sure I was home when there was a viewing (my housemates fully supported my revenge, but I was the woman of action in the house, when I’m sure I’m in the right I will do what’s necessary to make things right).

OP was successful at least until she finally moved out.

That was until they tried to turn up unannounced one day, not even knocking, just unlocked our front door and walked in.

Luckily I was in the house, and kicked them out for not informing us, and told them that they were in breech of our contract (if the bad landlord could use it to beat us with, two can play at that game).

No new tenants had signed for the house by the time we were free of that hell hole, it’s been two years now though so I have no idea what happened to the rat house.

Good riddance! That sounds like an awful place to live.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This definitely sounds illegal.

Another person thinks more should’ve been done.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about people who have to go to court to get their land back after their neighbor sells it.

This person was in a similar situation.

Here’s a suggestion to keep getting revenge.

That landlord was truly awful! Imagine knowing that such awful problems existed but instead of fixing them, modifying the lease to trick the tenant into being responsible to fix the problems! Diabolical!