Scammed

It would seem I've been getting scammed by my Landlord since I got here!.

In Canada it's common to rent a place without heat. This means that you pay for the heat on top of the rent (not that you have no heat :) ).
I understood this when taking the house on. Glen told me that when Irving, the Propane company delivers and then bungs a bill through the door for the fill up and I had to just pay that.
The bills were extremely high $290 sometimes in two weeks, however as it's so cold here, the house had poor insulation and was empty it seemed a high but not so unreasonably high amount. So I paid it on and on. I also had to pay for January's heat - anyone who remembers will know that I was supposed to come out on the January 6th, but the work permit was delayed.
So I've been playing catch up all these months. Basically paying $300 per month to pay off the bills.

Anyway when we got flooded here in the summer I saw another boiler downstairs - he said that this was next door's boiler and that they had underfloor heating. Next door is an add on to this building. He said he pays for their heat, it's all-in on that bill.
I accepted this.
Later when we were trying to paint the house I saw the two gas tanks, but on closer inspection saw only one feed coming from them.
Again I questioned on this, and he said it splits off somewhere in the basement. I queried who is paying for the fill ups, he said he gets a bill for it.
I figured that they must have some metre on each tank - naive - springs to mind, but like I said - some people do pay $300 nearly for heat.
Anyway more recently, couple of weeks ago, he came in to fix next door's boiler and it reminded me again.
What with the run up to Taryn's birth and other such things going on I'd simply been getting on with life and paying the bills - it made life VERY hard and meant we couldn't save for a UK trip, but it was affordable.
So I checked with Irving, and to date had paid $1900 to them - for just 3 1/2 months worth of heat. Jan, Feb, March and half of April. It got so hot here after that that the only gas we used would have been for hot water and stove.

So we get on his case.

Two Saturdays ago he phones up, and admits that we've been paying for our heat PLUS next door's heat since January!!!! He says he's investigated it and that he was getting billed for a house he sold a year ago, he didn't know about it, yada yada yada, and ended up offering to pay 18% of the bill, as the size of the add on with 1 person is 18%. This came to about £350.

Well....

After putting the phone down, collecting my thoughts and talking to Kath, it became apparent that we've been totally played.
He says that somebody has been using the gas at the place he bought and he's been paying it - but who the hell buys a new house and when they phone the utility company to set up gas and are told 'Oh, someone else is paying that for you', they then proceed to think... 'hmmm.. nice one we'll see how long that lasts muhahahaha!'.
Answer: NOBODY!
Unless they're extremely stupid. And he said once that he built the extension so how could he not know how the pipes and tanks were laid out.
It would seem that by having it as a connection to the house, and having no registered account for it, then they'd be no reason for him to say it was rented, and no need to declare it's income.. and therefore not pay taxes on it!

I was livid!!

I saw no way forward, a couple of ideas were banded around - he ended up offering 30% + paying 30% in future. But we've been very conservative with our gas, because we pay for it. 100% of people who have heated properties leave the heat on all the time, they don't put it on low when they go to work, or through the night etc. We have cold washes for our clothes and shower rather than bathe. You can bet the bird next door had it at a toasty 30C, and took nice long hot baths when it was -8C outside, whilst I, had my heating at 16C sat in a jumper and was out down the pub most of the time.
No way!

If I turned off the heat for this month of November, showered at a friends house and ate take out all month therefore spending 0%, I'd still have to pay 70% of next door's bill!!!!
Oh yeah his argument to that was... LOL... get this.. 'Well it wouldn't be 0%... you'd still be using gas for the pilot light of the stove AND the boiler downstairs... they have to stay on'.

WTF?!!? Get real!!! $200 for a frakkin pilot light! Whatever!

Someone suggested that we demand we pay $900 instead of $750 per month rent and have heat included, solving all worries. It was the ONLY option.

However I felt too betrayed to continue any further dealings with Glen Strickey... he let me down... he let me down BADLY!
So... The answer?
We move...

We've found a place, an awesome place - it's far more expensive, but I'd rather take it up the arse and have a decent place to live than to stay here. This place was very convenient and close to town, but it was always too small and cluttered, not what we envisioned.
We're really looking forward to moving and have started packing. I got most of my money back by refusing to pay this months rent, of $750, so I've ended up paying about $300 per month for 4 months which is more like it - I wouldn't get more out of him with out a fight, so at least this way we leave and he can't hold us to his lease agreement otherwise we'll grass him up.
GIT!

Let's hope he did us a favour, because we really love the new place.
So I'll keep blogging, but I'm now about to pack up the PC, so it'll be... occasional.

It's a SCAM!