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My landlord refused to fix a leaky toilet for 4 months - then blamed me for the water damage
I moved into a duplex in Portland last October and told the landlord about a slow drip in the toilet tank on day one. Four months later, after flushing with a bucket because the bowl kept overflowing, he finally sent a plumber who found a cracked fill valve that should've taken 15 minutes to swap. How do these guys stay in business when basic maintenance turns into a months-long headache?
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the_rowan13d ago
Why do landlords act like fixing anything is pulling teeth?
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anthony12713d ago
Hold up, let me play the other side here for a second. The landlord probably figured a slow drip wasn't an emergency, and maybe he was dealing with a dozen other units with actual floods or broken heaters. If you didn't follow up in writing every week, he could've easily forgotten or assumed you were being dramatic. Plus, @the_rowan, landlords aren't charities - they're trying to keep costs down so your rent doesn't go up even more, and a cracked fill valve might not look like a big deal to a guy who doesn't fix toilets himself. You also let it go four months without pushing harder, and then the overflow damage from flushing with a bucket made things worse than that original slow drip ever would have. So yeah, he's a jerk for dragging his feet, but you're not totally blameless here either.
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Wait, nobody's talking about the timeline here. A slow drip for four months in a rental means that water bill was slowly bleeding money the whole time. If the tenant was covering water, they were literally paying for the landlord's neglect every single month. That changes the whole dynamic for me. Did you ever check if your lease says anything about who covers water damage from deferred maintenance?
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