Short story: Woman said she wanted to rent a room for us, rather adamant about it. Gives us $200 for rent, takes the keys after walking up to the 2nd floor where room is, after meeting the male roommate and after taking a cab to our place. Next day she says we have to give back the $200 because she can't live with stairs, a male and we were too far from her life in the city (which she had been living in for 4 months). Do we have to give back the rent?
Details:
A young woman contacted me about the room I was renting out. She was very adamant that she wanted the room, was willing to the wire half the rent to me (she was visiting family out of state, and I had already pro-rated the rent for the month). I told her no worries, bring it when she came to look at the room.
She arrived, on crutches carrying a suitcase. We went up the stairs, I introduced the other roommate (who happens to be male and this was noted in the ad for a roommate), I told her the timing of the buses running, that if she wanted to move out to give us 2 weeks notice, if for some reason we wanted her to move out we'd give her 30 day notice (since it's easier to find a renter than to find a place sometimes). She handed over the money (which I did not count) and asked for a receipt. I was overwhelmed by her being so adamant to move in, that I sat down, wrote out a note that I received $200 dollars for the rent for the rest of Aug. She took the keys saying she'd be back probably that night, and have the rest of her stuff over the next day. She also had requested that I take the bed in the room out so she could use a preferred air mattress. Which I did.
The next day, the male roommate notices 2 things. One the young woman had not returned that night, and the rent pot was $50 light. I get an e-mail from the woman stating she did not spend the night and would not be living there because there were stairs, a male living there and the location of the apartment. She wanted her money back and she hoped we were not mad at her. I responded saying we'd already paid the rent, that we understood one could not live where they were not comfortable and that I had left my phone in another city.
That evening upon returning home, find she'd called 13 times, left 4 text messages, and sent another e-mail accusing me of ignoring her and that she had posted another ad up to find us a replacement roommate.
I responded again, basically repeating my first email to her, and asking her to exercise patience and understanding that she kind of left us in a bind and we would have to work on getting up the $200.
Since then she calls and text at least 7 times a day, demanding the money pretty much in that moment. I had told her that we were waiting for a check to clear (this was on a Sunday) and that we should be able to pay her on Tuesday as soon as it cleared. But it hasn't cleared yet, and now she is saying we owe her $250. And to be quite honest, I'm inclined to simply ignore her and not pay back the $200.
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