My landlord uses a property management "company" to collect rent checks.
My only interaction with the property management lady is paying rent. She requires the rent to be paid with personal checks, which she then forwards to the homeowner who takes them to his bank to deposit. I mail one every month around the 20th such that it arrives well before the due date at the first of the next month. However 4 of the last 16 months she has claimed the checks never arrived, and that she "knows our city has a terrible post office". Each time I've sent a replacement check and everything has been fine, and the missing ones never seem to turn up. Now she is requesting me to drop off the paper checks in a mailbox at her business instead of mailing them so they don't get "lost".
Given the 25% loss rate, I am pretty sure the property management lady is losing the checks and not the post office. It seems unreasonable to ask me to drive across town to deliver a paper check each month, and I prefer to avoid the expense and hassle of sending them via certified mail (almost as annoying as driving to the management lady's office). But maybe I'm just crazy. I've never been on a lease anywhere else and used to just pay cash under the table, and I don't know how real rental operations handle things. I've been here for 5 years and this lost check problem just started last year.
Does everyone in the 21st century pay rent by hand delivering a personal check, or are there any other options I could suggest as an alternative? This seems like something that could be solved with an ACH transfer, some online payment solution, or the company just managing to organize the office and not lose their mail. What have been y'alls experiences with various ways to pay rent?
Submitted April 03, 2023 at 11:31PM by BuilderOfDragons https://ift.tt/hlvTAiB
