Property damage

By Patty

My husband and I have been renting for approximately 1-1/2 yrs.  Our lease has expired and we are currently renting month to month. Approximately one month ago, my husband was concerned about recent car break-ins in neighborhood and tried to park his work truck in the garage.  It didn’t clear, he caused minor cosmetic damage to garage door frame.  (Stucco was cracked abourt 1-1/2 inches high and the header needed to be replaced.   We were planning on fixing the damage ourselves or having a professional do it.  My husband is currently working 50-60 hrs a week and I also work.  Three days after the accident my landlord came over to trim the trees.  He saw the damage and my husband explained what happened and told him that we were going to fix it.  They seemed to be fine with this.  The next day, I received a text from landlord saying that they wanted a licensed contractor to make repairs.  We said Ok, and proceeded to get a couple of quotes (150. – 200.00) from local contractors.  We contacted them a couple of days later and told them we had received the quotes and we were going to have it repaired that week.  They sent us a text to tell us we had to use their contractor (friend) and we would be responsible for the charges.   After two weeks, their contractor came to do the job.  They had multiple contractors/inspectors coming to the house as well as a painter, which we told her we would like to do to save costs.  In the end they told us the bill was $679.00, including the unnecessary repair to garage door mechanism.  Their guy told us was completely unnecessary and had no correlation to the damage we caused.  The garage door was up and there was no damage to the door or mechanism and was fully operational.   I sent her a text saying that we felt the charges were excessive compared to the quotes we had obtained and we would like to look at the receipts/bids.  We also told her what their garage door repairman had said.   We have not heard from the landlord since sending this text 4 days ago.  Do they have the right to charge whatever they like for the repairs? Could my husband have done the repairs himself, subject to their approval?

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