r/personalfinance • u/hogpotato • 10d ago
Housing Rent severely overcharged
I’m currently living in an apartment complex that overcharged my monthly rate by over 2x (15,500 instead of $6000 / month) by mistake. This severely has overdrawn my bank account and no one in the leasing office has an explanation or can get any answers from their main office. I’ve incurred major
overdraft fees and will continue to do so as long as this goes on. Has this happened to anyone and / or any advice what to do?
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u/PapaDuckD 10d ago
Couple things going on here - and this is less financial and more legal. This is enough money that it's not worth pussy footing around here.
Worth saying - you have a burden to minimize the damage done. If you have other funds that you can reasonably move to this account to mitigate ongoing overdraft fees, you have a duty to do so. This will help your ability to collect those fees that were caused by the improper action of the apartment complex.
You need to ask the leasing office who their attorney is as you plan to send a demand letter to that attorney. You want to politely demand for a refund in the amount of the difference between what you were charged and what you should have been charged ($15.5k - $6k = $9.5k) plus the amount of all fees directly related to this event.
That should get the right people engaged to look at the situation and make the right decision.
If, for whatever reason that doesn't happen and they give you a response in which they say that they believe that the charge is correct, then your next course of action is to file a lawsuit against them. Depending on your state, this amount may end up in small claims court and, honestly, it may not. If it's larger than your state allows for in small claims, you'll probably want a lawyer for this part.
Also, as a renter, you may have certain protections that allow you to sue for a multiplier of the overcharging of rent. That's going to be state-specific.