Before anyone comments that it’s always a toss-up when it comes to security deposits and Thailand and you should be prepared to lose it all–I know this and I’m prepared. I still want to fight for it though, because it’s a lot of money.
My landlord and/or her agent have been awful in all the traditional ways, doing every possible thing to indicate that they will try to keep my deposit–saying it cost 3k baht to paint a door before move in (HA), refusing to replace broken appliances even though it’s in the contract. The refrigerator, AC, and washing machine all broke four months into my lease because they’re 13 years old, were never maintained according to the technicians, and sat for awhile during covid. They never actually replaced the refrigerator and I had to buy another one myself.
When they wanted to raise the rent 40%, I politely declined to renew and found an identical unit in the building to move to. Immediately after I did this, the agent aggressively tried to schedule an inspection. This wouldn’t be weird, except for the fact that until then, it was impossible to get her to act or schedule anything. The condo building actually had to call the owner to get the agent to respond multiple times. This usually resulted in her blowing up my phone asking why I did that.
tl;dr landlord is a tightwad and agent is a… c-c-c-bitch. What leverage do I have?
