Jeshua's Life

Well, I had quite a big surprise when I opened my mail today. I hadn't gone to my mailbox yesterday, so today after church I stopped by and picked up my mail, since I figured I may have gotten a card or two for my birthday. My mailbox contained 2 things: a birthday card from my parents, and a letter from my apartment complex.

When I got back to my apartment and had finished reading my birthday cards (thanks to those that sent them, btw!) I opened the letter. In it was a "Notice to Vacate for Non-Payment of Rent, Utilities or Other Sums." The deadline for vacating is midnight on Oct. 10, which is tomorrow. I was fairly sure that I had paid, so I checked my checkbook, and saw that I had indeed done so. So perhaps they somehow lost the check? No, I checked online, and my bank had a scan of the cleared check available for viewing. Armed with this information, and driven by the horrible knot in my stomach, I marched over to the office. There they informed me that if I gave them a printout of that cleared check they would give it to the person in charge of those sorts of things tomorrow. Not having a printer of my own, I headed over to the business center and used the computer there to print out a copy. I'm not too happy about having to do that, since who knows what kind of spyware or keystroke loggers are installed on that machine. Anyway, I gave the evidence of my payment to the office, and they said I would be contacted tomorrow. They also said "Don't worry about this, you won't have to move out tomorrow or anything."

Slightly relieved, but still quite shaken, I ended up rereading the letter (which is a form letter) when I got back to the apartment. One of the boxes at the bottom that wasn't checked was "hand delivered to any one of the residents named above." On a whim, I decided to look at the top of the letter to see how they'd formatted my name, and discovered that the name at the top was "XXXXXXX Smith et al." (Where XXXXXXX is a name that's a few characters different from my name). Starting to get suspicious that perhaps they'd sent it to the wrong person, I checked the envelope. It's addressed to "Resident(s) Smith" (with the Smith hand written), at apartment YZZZ. "Yep, that's my address," I thought. "Oh wait, no it's not. Mine is apartment YYYZ. Hmmm."

Apparently there's someone with the same last name living in an apartment who's number is very similar to mine, and the mailman accidentally delivered it to me instead of her. I've never met her, but am kind of feeling sorry for her. I let the office know about the mistake, and they said they'd take care of it. Since I wrote all over the letter (keeping records of what I did, who I talked to, what they said, and when, just to be safe) they are going to have to send a new one. I tried knocking on her door to let her know, but didn't get an answer.

Here are some things to learn from this story:
1. Check the address on your mail, to make sure it was meant for you.
2. Check the name and address on the top of the letter, don't just skip past it and assume that it's correct.
3. Pay your rent on time.
4. Make sure you have records available for you to use in your defense. Ie. keep track of when and how you paid bills, and make sure you can get copies of the checks you used if you need to. My old bank charged extra for the service and I didn't pay for it, so I wouldn't have had the ability to dispute the non-payment had that happened then.

In my complex the rent is due on the first of the month, but they have a grace period of 2 or 3 days (I don't remember which). Next time I'm in the office I will double check with them to make sure they will give me a reminder that my rent is due if I haven't paid by the first. I'm now scared that I'll forget to pay, and end up being evicted just because no one reminded me that rent was due.

It's about two hours since I got that letter and I still haven't fully recovered from the shock. I really, really, really hope that this lady is already fully aware that this is coming.