What a Relief
While I was deployed, my wife remained at our home in Texas. One day in the middle of summer, the air conditioning broke and the landlord told her that the temperature wasn’t hot enough to require the repair. When she showed him pictures of the thermostat reading over 38C (100F) indoors, he finally said that he would send someone.
What a relief right? Well, apparently I needed to be there because I was the primary name on the lease. Since that was not an option, I threatened to sue, and the A/C was eventually jerry-rigged just as summer was ending. Also, the repair guy told my wife that he was paid to do the bare minimum fix. Too bad things didn’t end there.
Fast forward to when I’m back home. It starts getting hot and the A/C breaks again. The landlord gave us the same story as before, claiming it wasn’t hot enough. This dragged on until I finally had orders to move to a new duty station. We gave our 30 days’ notice and moved out. The landlord tried to tell me that I had to pay to fix the A/C or I wouldn’t get my deposit back.
I once again threatened to sue, and this time I contacted the actual owner of the house. I couldn’t believe his reaction. He was a cool dude living in New York and said he’d take care of it for me. He flew all the way to Texas, fired the landlords, sued them himself, and said I was actually the cleanest and most respectable tenant he’s had. He even paid me double my deposit for my troubles. Nice guy.
Story credit: Reddit