Tenants teach apartment manager a lesson after getting extremely high water bills

Utility bills sometimes end up higher than tenants expect, but it’s rare for them to be double or triple the usual amount. Reddit user u/trachavacado shared her shock when she received a water bill far beyond what she was used to. When she and a friend asked the apartment manager to look into it, they were dismissed—but the manager would later regret that decision.

She explained in her post that she lives in an apartment complex that was recently purchased by a new management company. Her best friends, Cole and Phoebe, live on the other side of the same complex. After the new management took over, the resident and rent payment portals were disabled, and tenants were told to use a new one. "I don't know what exactly happened, but it took over a month to get the new portals working, which was a nightmare," she wrote, adding that she tried to pay her rent in February of last year once the new system was finally up.

"As I always do, I checked the breakdown of what my utilities were (usually this is water, trash, sewer, CAM fees, and the tech package the complex includes), since we're charged based on usage," she said. The tenant was shocked to find that her water bill was $91. "Usually, it's around 30-40$. I understand increases happen, but usually, I see them towards the beginning of the year, and it's never this much of an increase," she explained. She immediately emailed the front office to ask what was happening. The front office's assistant manager told her that it was the water district that made the increase and that the complex had nothing to do with it and they weren't able to do anything about it.

The 27-year-old felt something was amiss so she contacted her friends who lived on the other side of the complex and they told her that their water bill had also doubled and it was usually at $120. "They also reached out to the office and were told the same thing. Cole pressed further, asking if the front office was going to further investigate this since it seemed odd for an increase to be happening in the middle of the year, let alone this much of an increase, and the front office told him he could research it, but that it wasn't their job," she shared. The tenant shared that Cole was a "very thorough person."

She added that he was a data analyst and answering all the questions is what he does and he is very good at it. Cole reached out to the water district and the water authority in their region through phone, email, and live chat, and every time he was given the same answer. They told him, "We would never raise water rates in the middle of the year, and it would never be by that much. Your complex is lying to you, something isn't right. They need to investigate this further," she shared. Cole went on to take all this information and compiled an email to write to the front office management. He even included the meeting minutes from the water authority. "Cole also included some other concerns we've all had in regards to the complex, such as gym and pool access, as well as the constantly broken access gates," she wrote.

Unfortunately, she and Cole did not receive any responses after sending the mail. Eventually, when Cole went back to the front office for an update, he was told that he needed to call the utility company, UB West, for further clarification. When he did, he was told by the utilities company that they no longer were in contract with their complex. So, Cole went back to the front office with this information and this time, he was told that the new utilities company was called, Conservice. "'Conservice' told us that they only started their contract with our complex on 8/1/2023, and they had no backdated information about any of our billing. So, we called UB West back to see if we could get our hands on backdated information. This is where things start to feel really, really fishy," the tenant wrote.

UB West escalated their contact to the financial manager of the contract of their complex and she gave them important information. "She told Cole and me that she noticed the increase in the water bill and that she told the leasing office manager that something was wrong and that legally she needed to start an investigation, and she never heard back. Not long after this, their contract was termed," the 27-year-old said. So, Cole and the tenant even went through how the water bills were calculated and issued to the entire complex and shared that it was conflicting with what the front office told them.

By then, the front office was frustrated with them. "At this point, the front office seemed to be getting very annoyed with our persistence and they told us that we should take our concerns up with corporate. So we did," she wrote. Cole approached the corporate and forwarded all the information he had including all the answers he received from the front office. Corporate responded within 24 hours and said that they would investigate this matter and after going through everything, the district manager contacted Cole. He gave the tenant an update on what panned out after they filed the complaint.

She wrote, "The district manager started the conversation with a genuine apology, and she stated that the entirety of the leasing office staff had been terminated immediately. She also assured Cole that an appointment was made to fix the gates and have the exit spikes re-installed within the week and that everything else would be personally investigated by her, including the water bills for all tenants in the complex." The manager added that she had no idea about someone being shot or about the fact that Phoebe's car was stolen. However, she assured Cole that the tenants would be getting a whole new front office staff from corporate in a few weeks. 

u/yparticle commented, "Wow! Great sleuthing! I imagine corporate was just relieved you didn't have lawyers or the city involved yet. I hope all the tenants get refunded any money they were defrauded of." u/[deleted] wrote, "I have a feeling one of the office staff was either using other tenants water bills for her water or adding to the water bill for money." u/thedarkestcrown expressed, "I just want to give a shout-out to Cole and you for the badassery of getting this sorted. Props to the District Manager for her no-BS approach too. Can’t wait to see how this ends." u/kittykittymeowmeow1 said, "This is amazing! Go, Cole, you may have saved so many of your neighbors a lot of money and stress."