Rod Adams, Adams Construction Company Landlord unreasonably withheld deposit after we rented there for over 3 1/2 years Ripoff Oklahoma City Oklahoma

In August of 2001 My wife and I moved into a rental house owned and rented to us by Rod Adams. We continued to live there and rent from Rod until the end of March 2005.

We had an indoor cat and an outdoor dog which Rod knew about charging an extra deposit for the indoor cat. After giving up on keeping the dog in the yard we finally got rid of him less than a year of living there. The cat remained with us until we moved out but became an outdoor cat not long after getting rid of the dog.

The house itself was in good condition for the price with the look of having been recently renovated with the exception of very worn carpet. Like I said, the price was good so we decided to live with worn carpet.

One problem the house did have was a bad mold problem, particularly in the winter. My wife spent at least one day a week cleaning the mold of the walls. When I told Rod of this, his answer was to crack a window.

When we finally moved out, we moved out of state for a job opportunity. After a couple of months without hearing from Rod about returning our deposit, I called him to find out why. I was told that he had to replace all the carpet because of urine smell and sujested I was keeping a dog in the house.

He said that he tried to let it go thinking it would air itself out but that two weeks after the new tenants moved in they called to tell him that if the carpet wasn't replaced because of the smell they would move out. He said replacing the carpet negated any deposit.

I was shocked. First, we didn't keep a dog in the house. The dog we had when we moved in was way to large to be an indoor dog. The cat was not only already "litter trained" when we moved in. but became an outdoor cat for the later part of the time we lived there. Additionally, my wife steam cleaned the carpet monthly because she wanted to feal comfortable about our two small children playing on the carpet.

Another thing I can say, we have rental property of our own and I've never had a tenant leave a house as good as we left this house. Now, I'm not going to say it was perfect as there is always something you miss for someone who is going to nitpick to find but this was by far better than the average tennant. In the past, we've always gotten ALL of our deposit back with the exception of once where we forgot to clean out the oven and was charged $20.00.

My personal speculation is he knows, now that we live a long way away, it doesn't pay for us to persue getting our deposit if he decides to keep it so rather than go into a fruitless argument with him or spend more money than the deposit is worth trying to get it back, I'll just make a report here.

Pete
Vero Beach, Florida
U.S.A.