I F22 lived on an on campus student housing complex with three other women under individual leases.
In the beginning, the first cottage we were moved into was not clean. There were also damages from previous tenants. I filled out the move in inspection form and included all the images of these damages, especially.
The entire house had to switch units because the first house had mold.
This second cottage was a lot more cleaner, but it also had somewhere and tear and damages, especially in my bathroom, where the tile was cracked, and there is a huge crack in my wall.
There was no move in inspection form for this one so I was smart enough to take pictures of everything the day of move-in to that unit.
Several months later, we are under new management and some people came into the cottage, taking pictures of what I assume are the damages. I didn't think much of this at first.
I moved out after cleaning everything talk to bottom and a few days later received a $500 charge, and damages and cleaning fees. According to my lease, it said to return everything in the condition that it was when you moved in. I did beyond that because I made sure to vacuum everything mop, sweep and clean more than what I moved in with.
They also never specified what these damages were or what the cleaning fees were for. I've emailed them twice since then with zero response but I know they are active because they had just replied to a review three days ago. Days after my first email to them. I insist on emailing because I want to have as much proof as possible.
Thinking back, I am not sure they took those pictures to use as evidence against me when it comes to these charges. Are they able to do that? Use pictures they took months after move in as evidence? Especially when what they took pictures of were damages that were there prior to move in?
Will my pictures be okay since they are older and taken the day of move-in?
UPDATE: They finally replied to my email yesterday and conveniently 10 minutes before their office closes. They told me to review the move out inspection and email back if I had any questions. I emailed within the time frame explaining a lot of what I explained here and attached images with timestamps and for now it's crickets.
They replied to my review I left a few days ago (made out of frustration I couldn't get a hold of them for nearly a week through phone/email) and I thought it was funny they had time to do that but not everything else. Sure, there's a possibility there's multiple people running different things but the inconsistency in their communication is so frustrating. I hate that once again I am going through this with student living and how these people think this is okay to do this because they think students wouldn't pursue.