Apartment utilities

By obie323

I’m a current renter who is on a lease agreement for 12 months.  My situation is regarding our utilities.  We moved into our townhome on a lease agreement for 12 months @ $1345 per month.  To our knowledge our utilities were paid by us in our $1345 rental amount.  We signed our lease agreement and moved in June’08.  We paid our deposit, pro-rated month, and got a month free.  So in August we paid our $1345, and for September we have paid.  Now we recently received a notice that we missed September’s $84 water, sewer, garbage bill.  Which I thought was unusual because we did not receive a notice like this for August.  I re-read our lease agreement which states, “Tenant will pay $84 for water, sewer, garbage.”  Which is what we have done, our garbage picked up and water/sewer still working.  So I called to the office to find out what the notice was about.  The manager states that we did not pay the $84 charge, I then explain that our rent is $1345 and that our agreement does not state that the water,sewer, garbage was an additional $84.  Our rent would then be $1429, which is more than we set up for.  I then asked the manager why didn’t we receive the same notice for last month and her explanation was that maybe billing made a mistake and didn’t get it out, and since there was a mistake that she will waive that month but we still have to pay for September.

My question:  is this right for the Landlord to charge and additional utility fee, even though a renters rent is signed as a set amount and on the agreement it does show the water, sewer, garbage charge but is that included with the rent?

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