I truly believe in Karma. What goes around comes around. In this case it did. There are always consequences for your actions.
Ben and I created a full proof packet of a chronological timeline of everything that had happened since she moved in April 2017.
I wanted to settle this stupid thing today. We went to court not because we wanted to but because we had to. It was mostly the principle of it and to get our money she owed us. I still can't comprehend why she thought it was okay to not finish paying what she owed us and why we were at court. The reason why we were at court in the first place were because of her previous behaviors and actions which they led us here. This problem was very simple to conclude but she wanted to make it difficult by asking advice from friends. This went on for almost four months when it could have been done and over with and kept out of the court room if she would have just cooperated.
Ben and I dress appropriately for court, he dressed in his suit and I dressed in my nice slacks, sweater and a pea coat. We had our two copies of our documentation in our hands and Josh was on hand just in case we needed him as a witness. We got to the court house and it was difficult trying to find a parking spot even thought we gave ourselves plenty of time.
We saw her car in the parking area and it was full of people...why? She wasn't even driving it herself. When they parked and got out it was like a car full of clowns coming out. I hope she realized that all of those people would be useless in mediation and there was no point in bringing them with her. None of them dressed nicely, jeans and oversized sweatshirts, no one would take any of them seriously if spoken to.
We went inside and looked at the board to see which court room we were going to be in. We went inside and waited in the back. We ignored that they sat in front of us.
Judge came in promptly at 9 a.m. and discussed how the proceedings went. He explained everything thoroughly especially for the people who have not been exposed to how this works. He basically said your best interest is going through mediation rather than having an actual court session with him because he does not care why you're here, he does not care what your problem is, he does not care about if you owe someone money or that someone owes you money, he does not care about how you feel, he only cares about the facts in a professional manner. I found his explanation hilarious.
Her clown posse was dismissed because they had no direct part in this matter so they left the room to sit in the waiting room until we came to agreement. Yes it was two on one and I didn't care.
He allowed us to get together with our defendants to see if we could talk out the problem. One group did not want to mediate so they went directly into trial. Ben and I sat down with her and I let Ben do the talking because I just wanted to put her in physical pain. He explained what we were after, that we had paperwork, documentation and that this will be awful if she didn't cooperate. She came with nothing except a notebook and the letters we sent her certified mail. He also added that she had signed a contract with us, that meant she was responsible for her actions, the actions had consequences, we had pictures, signatures, text messages, etc. He went on by saying that we were here for the following reasons:
1. Vet Bill (claims she never asked us to take our cat to the vet and we should have kept him home and monitor him without the proper medical supplies, so we were just going to hope for the best after he ate some of her poisonous plant she left on the floor?) She agreed to pay me before the end of the year and stopped paying me but claimed the checks were in the mail and I never received them. I had proof on my bank records that I never deposited them nor did I get them in the mail if they were certified. This is where it stopped making sense in our messages to her over the phone. We did this so we had a record of what she was telling us.
2. Wall Damage (while moving out her and her friends put a hole in our wall, lied about it and then finally admitted today that they did in fact do damage to the wall) she requested that we get an invoice from ReMax and we did. She wasn't happy with the results so decided she wasn't going to pay that either. You asked for the invoice and you got the invoice, don't be dumb!
3. The Cleaning Fee (again, tried denying the conversation with Erika ever happened and threw Erika under the bus, even though we had the screen shot from Erika's phone) She didn't want to pay this even though it was on the lease that she signed. Ben even went over this two days before she moved out and agreed to it! If you don't want to be held accountable for your actions then don't say you understand and then sign it!
She showed up not wanting to pay (she thought what she had paid in the past was good enough) and gave us a sob story of why she didn't want to pay to get what she wanted. She tried to get out of everything and we had a factual documented reason why just not wanting to do it at every excuse she threw at us. I sat there listening to this train wreck. She kept backing herself into a corner every time she spoke. We had to explain our situation three different times to each of the mediators (which wasted time) and did not come to an agreement. I spoke up that we wanted to use more of our time with mediation so we could get this done today. They arranged it.
We left the court room and went into a different room to where we could talk with the mediators. We were hoping to use our evidence but the mediators didn't care about the facts. They wanted us to settle whether she back down, we backed down or came to an agreement. They considered feelings more than explanations, she almost cried when I interrupted her. I only interrupted her because her statement was untrue. I got yelled at my the mediator for interrupting. I told her the reason why we were here was because of her. These things happened because of her, I told her this problem is simple and wanted to settle. She continued to lie to the mediators and it disgusted us.
We had to drop the late fees for us to get anywhere (I HATE being the bigger person in these situations) we put those in there just to see if we could get it, basically a bonus, a starting point to barter with (start high, see where it goes.) So instead of the $600+ we went with the 500+. She didn't want to pay the invoice (even though she was the one who requested it) and tried arguing about the conversation with ReMax that never happened. She finally settled for $410. Ben didn't want her to go scot free with the cleaning fee that she ignored so I took it upon myself to try for $450 instead just because. She bought into it and agreed to that amount.
We basically ate $102 but it wasn't a total loss because we were trying to get more out of her than the actual cost of the wall anyway just to see if we could.
We also agreed that this would be paid to us in one lump sum (her tax return) before March 20th via certified mail. She had the guts to ask if we wanted to pay the $10 for the certified mail, we said no because we've sent several certified mail to her since December. If we did not receive it, she defaults, we garnish her wages. We get her money anyway. She was advised to just pay it as soon as she could by the mediators. We wrote up the paperwork and we each signed it and got a copy of it for our records.
We went to IHOP with Josh and had victory pancakes. We shared with Josh how the mediation went and he wasn't surprised on how it went down.
We expected to get the money before the actual due date and we were totally kidding ourselves. She texted me the tracking number so I could see where it was and when it would get here. I feverishly checked it multiple times a day. It should have gotten here around the 10th. It didn't. We literally received our payment on March 20th at 5:30 p.m. She had to have her friend hand deliver it to my house. I had to sign the card to make sure I received it. Then she asked me to check my address to see if it was right and it was. Weird...
I found out through the tracking stuff after the fact that there was a problem with the address (of course there was) and it had to be sent back and forth between the post offices and the delivery drivers. Not sure what happened or it just added to the stupidness of this whole mess. Since I got it so late in the day I couldn't go cash it so I had to wait until the next day.
IT...WAS...FINALLY...OVER!!
Next Adventure: New Mattress
No comments:
Post a Comment