The more stories like this you read, the more you might start to think that folks working in housing administrations and the like have just had enough of caring and are in a certain kind of career free fall.

Someone has a debt to pay? Send them an angry letter. Oh, they replied? Whatever. Send them another angry email on how they haven’t paid the debt yet. What? They don’t have to pay? Send them another one.

Or so it would seem, as this one nibling (niece or nephew when you’re not really sure of their gender) of a late aunt started getting pestered by a housing association that really wanted $360 back.

More Info: Reddit

Apparently, there are things that you can’t take to your grave, and one of them is your aunt’s supposed “debt” that the housing admin is trying to impose on you

Image credits: Rido81 (not the actual image) 

But, for some, any attempt at debt collecting sounds sus right off the bat and so they start fighting it with logic

Image credits: u/Josieeeeeeee

And when logic doesn’t work—mostly because the debt collector decides to ignore all of it—then you get angry and then you win

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/Josieeeeeeee

And by angry, it was actually recalculating (i.e. fixing) the admin’s math and instead of a $360 debt, it’s now a $240 return because of overpayment

While you might have already read the story in its image form, for those using text-to-speech, we got you, fam. In a nutshell, OP had an aunt and then they stopped having an aunt, but the housing administration for the apartment they rented together still wanted its money back, claiming the aunt owed them around £300 (or US$360).

A quick back-and-forth determined that that was a lie and that the association actually owed OP about £200 (or US$240) because they overpaid. The issue suddenly became a non-issue for 2 years, after which it again became an issue when OP got another letter about the same debt, completely ignoring their previously provided rebuttal.

And, let’s just say, this really irked OP something fierce, so they dedicated several weeks of their time to make sure the association got an earful of how they had miscalculated all this time, leading to a rep apologizing profusely on behalf of the company and giving OP their $240 back. A satisfying story all around.

Now, while the story was posted on r/MaliciousCompliance, it wasn’t really in its true nature a malicious compliance, but nobody cared as the resolution hit the spot just as well as your partner finding that one specific location on your back that you can’t reach, which was causing a major itch, and then delivering a scratch so good you start salivating. But I got way off-topic here.

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual image) 

Bored Panda reached out to OP who elaborated on their story and provided some context:

“I believe there must’ve been an issue with what they had on file,” speculated OP. “When my aunt died, someone sitting at a desk looking at the numbers only sees that the account is in arrears, perhaps without looking at the full context of the situation, which led to me naively paying it all off in the first place, but when I had stayed at the property for a few more weeks after that, as far as the numbers are concerned, I still owed for the last couple of weeks. Basic communication in the company would’ve prevented this, however, I was also dealing directly with the local agent to sort everything out. She never even entertained the idea that I wasn’t liable for these arrears, perhaps maliciously but probably out of ignorance or incompetence.”

Now, OP is from the UK. They explained that a housing association is an estate and rental agency of sorts. They typically have many houses for sale or rent and they charge the landlord a fee for their services. They seem quite popular in the country as an appealing apartment management and maintenance service. But that also means having to deal with OP’s predicament.

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Image credits: Better Renting (not the actual piece of visual footage)

Right off the bat, a lot of commenters explained how all of this looks predatory. They elaborated that the company seems to have been taking advantage of a situation, knowing all too well they couldn’t do it, but nothing stopped them from trying. For the record, they could only get the money from the aunt, and so forcing OP into signing an agreement officially made it their problem, but they couldn’t otherwise because death most certainly excused her from that obligation.

Others suggested taking it one step further and turning the housing administration’s threats of debt collecting against themselves, and do that with interest over the 2-plus years since whenever the overpayment happened. This also prompted some to think about whether the admin had managed to affect OP’s credit score already, but there is no word of that from OP.

“After looking at the comments on the posts, there were people suggesting charging interest, which I might’ve been liable to do, but honestly I think the amount in question would’ve made the interest amount negligible, and it would’ve been much more effort. I was happy to receive the £200 considering I wasn’t expecting to get that money back at all until they contacted me again,” elaborated OP.

Yet others shared stories of a similar caliber: one person had a company shadily try to make them “inherit” the previous homeowner’s fuel delivery payment as they themselves still had the fuel after becoming the owner of the house; and another person, having concluded their lease, but still being bombarded by bills that apparently popped up after a new accountant was hired and they started finding “holes” in payments, which can’t be sought out retroactively.

Whatever the case may be, the original post on Reddit garnered nearly 8,500 upvotes (with a 97% approval rating) and engaged a fair bit of discussion in the comment section. You can actually check it all out in context here.

But before you do anything else today, be sure to check out some other housing administration goodness by giving this and this a read, or, at the very least, smashing that upvote button in the least violent way possible and sharing your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below because we all want to have a conversation at this point.

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Folks online too were happy OP got out of this situation winning, but also suggested more malicious solutions, among other things

Image credits: Micael Widell (not the actual image) 

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