I'm ticked!!

Emergency Fund Daily Savings

July 6th: $25/$800
July 7th: $30/$800

I had a terrible day yesterday. It seemed that everyone I talked to other than my family, was doing their best to tick me off. I had some terrible service at the bank yesterday, and you can bet on the fact that the branch manager will be getting an e-mail from me about it. I usually rave about the fact that this bank branch has superior customer service, but if anyone had asked me about my dealings yesterday, they would have gotten an earful.

It would seem that I have to retain the services of a paralegal, as we are on the verge of being taken to small claims court, again. This time, I am putting my foot down. Yesterday, we got an invoice in the mail from the property management company from where we last lived prior to here. We moved from that property in late August 2008. When we left, we were told all was fine, and that we did not owe them any money for anything. During the walk through with  the property manager, she mentioned that the place would need to be painted throughout, as that was a normal part of what they did when before a new tenant moved in.

So imagine my surprise when in my mail was an invoice for over $900 for cleaning and painting the unit. I called an spoke with the property manager whose name was on the bottom of the letter. He couldn't tell me why they had never contacted us until now to give us this bill, but that it had been on their files since January of 2009. We bickered back and forth about some things. He says he has pictures of how dirty the unit was left. He wanted to know how a unit could get so dirty from such a short amount of time that we were there. (We lived there for a year.) He had me feeling like we were slobs, and left the unit in deplorable condition, which we did not.

I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations on filing a small claims suit is two years after a loss, financial or otherwise, incurs. Even if we didn't know about it. When I mentioned it to him, he said that the statute is seven years that they can try to recover the monies through small claims, and that if when they won a judgement, it would be on our credit report for 20 years. Now, unless they changed the statute recently, I am unaware of this. Regardless, he was raising his voice, and saying things that were essential belittling, saying that people who don't know the law shouldn't try to quote it.

Talk about maddening! I was furious to say the least. After hubby and I talked, we decided that we would rather pay a paralegal a couple of hundred bucks to get this company off our back, instead of paying the property management company. I know that it's my anger talking, but if they had given us this bill when they were supposed to, I would have still been angry, but I would have sucked it up and paid it. Not almost 3 years after we moved out of the unit. I feel like we're being bullied by a company who is trying to offset their costs of doing business using less than professional tactics.

Could we take care of this bill by just paying it? Yes, but it would set us back in our other goals somewhat. I'm going to give a paralegal a call, and take the letter and invoice to him to get another opinion. I don't want to pay any of it if I don't have to.

We went out last night so that we could do something that we really wanted to do with Cub, and let me tell you, some drivers in this city should have their licences taken away. We were almost hit twice because of impatient drivers. That certainly didn't help to lower my level of anger any.

We did take Cub to a movie theater for the first time. We watched Cars 2, in 3D. What a cute movie! Cub absolutely loved it, and cried when we had to leave, because he still wanted to watch the big t.v.
Only problem was, he wouldn't wear the 3D glasses, so the way he saw the movie was a little distorted.

I've got a couple of appointments today, so hopefully, some alone time will help me to stay calm.