Landlord owes US?

By A88

The situation is a bit complicated, but I’ll do my best to explain:

Last year (in October 2011) myself and two others moved into an apartment together. We split the rent 3 ways, paid on time every month, and never had any issues with the landlord.

When the time came to renew the lease, the third person living with me informed myself and the 2nd person that he would no longer be able to afford living in an apartment and would be returning home. We informed the landlord, who agreed to let myself and the other person move into a different apartment in the SAME complex, with a lower monthly rent. We signed off that we would NOT be renewing our lease on the original apartment. We also signed the lease for the new apartment, which stated that we would be receiving a $45 monthly discount on rent
(5% of monthly rent, same discount we received on the old one) because one of us is employed by a school district which cooperates with the company we are renting from.

We moved into the new apartment on September 21st, 2012. Since we moved out before the end of our lease (and had paid last month’s rent when we moved in a year ago), the landlord informed us that last month’s rent would be transferred over as a "credit" on our current apartment, in addition to our security deposit (less $275 in deductions which we were aware of). Last month’s rent was $874, and we were told we would receive back $645 from our security deposit, for a total of $1,519 in "credits" which would be applied to our security deposit on the new place ($895), and the remaining $624 would be deducted from our rent in November (so, we would only owe $221 for November’s rent).

Our rent is on an automatic withdrawal from our bank accounts, and two days ago I noticed that the FULL amount of rent (without the employer discount) was deducted. This means that not only are we NOT receiving our monthly rent discount, but they also did NOT apply the $624 credit to our bill for November.

I called the property manager, who informed me that she would have to speak with the regional accounting office and call me back. She never did. When I called HER the next day, she told me that she "wasn’t sure what was going on" since she had been out of work having surgery while these events transpired. To her understanding, there had been an error with the amount credited to our account. The regional office had mistakenly credited us an additional amount of rent for 2/3 of September, which they did NOT owe us and which we do NOT dispute (meaning instead of a $1,519 credit, they issued us $2,112). She said that the extra money was taken from our account this month to account for that error, and that a $324 credit would be applied to December’s rent.

When I informed her that we were owed $624, not $324, she could give me no answer regarding where the extra $300 had gone. She gave me the number for the regional office, and a (rather rude) receptionist there informed me that I should not have called, as the property managers are supposed to handle these situations and NOT refer tenants to the regional office. When I explained that the property manager had been unable to help me, she sighed and informed me that the woman I needed to speak with was not in at the time, and I should call back at 10am today.

I just got off the phone with the same receptionist, who informed me that the person I needed to speak with had still not arrived for work and I should call back later. When I asked her when a good time to call would be, she responded "I don’t know, managers don’t have a set time. She’ll be in whenever."

Am I crazy or is this situation bordering on ridiculous? As far as I’m aware (based on rental history reports which my property manager supplied me), our security deposit HAS been paid for our of our account credits, which means that we are owed a $624 credit on December’s rent (we paid in full for October and now for November, in addition to a pro-rated rent for the one week in September which we lived here and ALL of September’s rent at the old place).

Any suggestions on who to call/action to take if I am unable to reach someone to resolve this?

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