• REgon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      7 days ago

      Literally. A bunch of friends and I rented a summerhouse for a week for what was basically a week-long bender. We had to pay about 650$ upfront for a non-optional “cleaning fee” that wasn’t included in the price of the house. I say up front, but it wasn’t. It was a real shady procedure, but we didn’t complain because we booked it last minute due to a natural disaster destroying the familial home of a friend of a friend, which was where we were supposed to go, and besides the place was about 500$ cheaper than all like places, so we only ended getting scammed for 150$ (enbie math)

      We didn’t trash the place, but we also didn’t take any special effort not to make it dirty. Especially not with that outrageous fee, it made us assume they had professional cleaners or something. On the day of check-out a single elderly lady shows up to clean. It’s obvious it’s a sidegig for her to pay her bills, she couldn’t even lift chairs. I don’t know what the fuck they were thinking. I don’t think she got paid more than 80-100$ either.
      We do as much as we can to help her before our transport picks us up, but… We were 12 people being drunk af for a week and she had arthritis. She told us someone was coming to help her, but I doubt it. I think she probably cleaned for an hour and left, I imagine that was the deal she had with the landlord who owned 7 houses on that road. Ghoul.

      We then got a followup letter complaining about how dirty we left the place. They also tried to charge us for stuff like a dirty toaster (which we cleaned both before we used it and after we left because it was nasty) and other similar stuff that had just been broken for years probably. Luckily one of us on the trip was studying law, but like, the fucking audacity.
      We ended up sending a letter detailing how shitty the house was beforehand and then explaining (as if to a baby, I did the writing, so I made sure it was sassy as shit) that if you charge a cleaning fee - especially one so damn high - then you can’t complain about the place being dirty.

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        7 days ago

        We ended up sending a letter detailing how shitty the house was beforehand and then explaining (as if to a baby, I did the writing, so I made sure it was sassy as shit) that if you charge a cleaning fee - especially one so damn high - then you can’t complain about the place being dirty.

        Landlords and not wanting to actually make use of the BS cleaning fees they charge for, a tale as old as time.