[tptacek]

I did this before and ended up in court. If you're renting from a property management company (not an uncommon situation), chances are they have counsel, or are perhaps themselves attorneys. They're willing to play chicken.

(We ended up settling to recover the security deposit).

Style note: it might not be the best idea to repeatedly threaten legal action. First, as I learned recently on HN, doing that can create a procedural opportunity for your adversary.

Second, the law is in fact on your side in these cases, and, as I learned when we sued our landlord, the most effective way to win these cases is statutorily: you carefully establish the timeline and the basis for contesting the damage, and if they don't respond properly, they can auto-lose the case and be on the hook for treble damages.

If I found myself in this situation again, I'd send a note emphatically but emotionlessly contesting the damages, noting dates carefully, and send that registered mail. I would not attempt to educate the landlord on landlord-tenant law.

[larrys]

Agree that this letter (as what you have just indicated exactly) is a YMMV for sure.

As a landlord myself I didn't have to even read this letter to know that it would be worth my while to dispose of this problem by paying back the money. My take is "this guy has a lot of time on his hands and I don't".

Otoh, there are others who will fight a battle just for the sake of the battle and there are other battles that I do fight literally just for fun sometimes. It's like a game in a way.

In contrast I had a few commercial tenants (Physician practices) and had to withhold some money on move out for various issues. We wrote a long detailed 3 page letter knowing full well that the Physician wasn't going to take the time to question any of the information that we so completely presented. And they didn't. And we never heard any issues or complaints or a peep about the money that was not returned (we returned some escrow of course).

So once again, in business, it all depends on the circumstances and the particulars of each situation.

One other thing I will point out is in our state an individual can represent themselves in small claims court but a corporation can't. So right off the bat if you are suing a corp you have an advantage their unless they have in house council or want to send a particular message of "don't mess with us".

[bane]

Great advice. My advice is to figure out a gradual escalation path with the legal option as the final (and unsaid) last step. Leave it unsaid because people will lawyer up the moment legal action is brought up and it short circuits any less adversarial (and expensive) escalation options.

I've been in a few difficult situations like this and was able to solve all these situations without threatening legal action simply by walking up the escalation path, saying what I was going to do and then doing it.

For example, I had a situation with a prospective landlord while I was in college who simply kept asking for more and more documentation while considering our application to rent (it was a largish apartment complex). After 5 visits, during which yet some new required document was needed, my wife and I decided to cancel the application and go elsewhere. I went in, told them we've decided to stop being jerked around and cancel the application, I simply asked for all of my information back (since it was sufficient for an unscrupulous landlord to commit identity theft on us). They refused.

So I started escalating.

- I found the parent company they worked for and sent a few (physical) letters requesting our information back.

- Then I filed a complaint with the BBB. This initiated a mediation procedure where the BBB contacts the landlord and tells them they're about to get a complaint and if our single criteria isn't met this complaint will reflect negatively on the apartment complex. The BBB is not a big thing, but lots of people do use it as a reputation marker and mediator. They didn't comply and got the negative complaint.

- I wrote another letter to the parent company and the landlord informing them of this escalation and again confirming our demand for our material.

- I contacted the county Consumer Protection Agency (not all counties have one) and filed a complaint and my demand for the return of our material. I again sent letters to the landlord and parent company informing them of this and providing them with copies of my correspondence with the CPA.

- I then escalated to the State Corporation Commission. Asked how to file a complaint and spent some time dealing with that bureaucracy, but eventually finding the right department. I filed the complaint, notified the offenders again. A couple weeks later the SCC contacted me back and said they'd received several complaints about the same place and about similar unscrupulous behavior and would be taking action against the landlord. They asked what I was looking for, I told them "just our application materials" and they were like "oh, is that all? that should be easy".

Two weeks later a package arrived in the mail with our stuff, not a single page missing. I contacted the parent company, landlord CPA and SCC to inform them the matter had been resolved.

It took a lot of time, but it kept options open to me and put the legal fight in other parties' hands. Going to the SCC instead of my lawyer, I found out that others had been in a similar situation and it aggregated and amplified my argument and rallied consumer protection law to my side instead of me going it alone. It also helped that I kept careful records and dates of every interaction and was able to build a record for the SCC to work off of on my behalf. It took time, but other than postage and paper supplies didn't cost me a penny.

A single hour with a lawyer would have cost me more.