Flatmate bill trouble... am I being unreasonable?

galwayguy85

Hi Guys.

Really just looking for a second opinion here...

A girl moved into the house I've sharing in around November of last year.

Sometime around the middle of December she completely vanished. She left no note or contact details that I nor the other people in the house could see...

She came back last week. She was doing training for her job, in Dublin. All of us normal live in work in Cork.

I tried making contact with her on Facebook a few week after she left. I got no reply nor any indication that she had even read the message.

The heating in the house is normally on for several hours a day, especially so in the height of Winter. Everybody in the house has different working schedules. One of use works nights...

Not knowing where she was nor was she ever actually coming back I guessed it would be best to turn off the heating in her room, to help minimise the bills and also lessen the impact on the environment. The only way of doing so was to turn the dials off on the radiator.

The last bill Airtricity bill has come. It is much higher than normal!

She in a huff about paying her one quarter, on the basis that she was gone all that time and was not at home to take advantage of the heat. She is also using the argument that her "privacy was invaded" as a basis for not paying the bill, which I can understand, but I must concede that if I was going to vanish from a shared house for months on end I would at least come to an agreement with the others i share with beforehand and/or switch off the radiators.

Had no action been taken about the heating being for hundreds of hours in her room, the bill would be HIGHER still and we'd be having much the same argument.

She is proposing that the landlord make a 100-mile-round-journey to switch off the rads on the basis that they might have on. Somebody would've had to have entered her room at a certain point to take action. Let's be practical.

Who do you think is in the wrong here?

Penny Tration

She's in the wrong.

In a house share, you do not decide to not pay bills because you've been away a while. She paid rent for an unused room, so she can pay a bill for unused heat.

She doesn't have a say, simply put. In a house share, bills are split regardless of whether you were there every day, 5 days a week, or not at all for weeks.

galwayguy85

Cool. Thanks for backing me up on that.

I want to respect her privacy, but based on the facts at the time, I honestly had no way way of knowing if or when she was coming back.

Anyway, queue lots of people avoiding eye contact in the shared house!

uck51js9zml2yt

She sounds like more hassle than shes worth.
Is she the lease?
If not get whoever is to ask her to leave as she has no rights as a licencee in this case.

Oink

She doesn't have to justify her comings and goings, but there are limits. Vanishing from a shared house for that amount of time without a word or contact number shows very poor manners. And there is no customizing bills. Either you're a tenant or you're not. Unless the flatmates kindly offer a discount but you don't get to demand it. I'd keep an eye on her.

iusedtoknow

she's completely in the wrong regarding the bills and disappearing like that. When I was in a share, we'd always let each other know if we were away for the weekend or holiday as a courtesy - a) so that they wouldn't wonder if anything had gone wrong and b)to give them the chance to organize things like friends coming over etc . It was just polite.

Bills, no matter what were split equally with no questions asked - no discounts for being away etc. It just made life easier. I paid them and left a note in the kitchen with photocopies of the bills in question - and usually that afternoon or the next morning there'd be an envelope with the money inside or a transfer to my own account.

As for going into her room, i can kinda see why she was pissed off, but the best way to have dealt with it would have been to attempt to contact her say 3 times over a week, and then if no response, text her AFTER you had gone in to turn off the heat.

She sounds like more hassle than she's worth and I would think about finding another tenant.

IlmoNT4

In a shared house, bills are split equally, regardless if you are there or not. She still paid rent right? Under her thinking she shouldnt have to pay rent either, as she wasnt using the room, bed or house but I'd say the landlord will think differently.

Unless you come to an agreement prior to heading off with your flatmates about bills... I lived in a house share for years. There were 4 of us, one of the lads use to go traveling for work, he was gone for sometimes up to 6 weeks. He never had an issue with paying the bills but if he was gone for an entire 2 months of billing for the ESB say, then we'd just divide that by 3 ...he never asked us to do that...but most of the time, it was easier and fairer for everyone just to pay rent and bills

As for privacy issues, thats nonsense. I'm suprised you didnt call the cops to report a missing person, or bag up all her stuff and get another tenant in.... Who does that, takes off for over 3 months and doesnt tell anyone... For all you knew, she'd done a legger ...

galwayguy85

Yeah. I would agree with you all.

To back up my supposition there was also what appeared to be a money-lender coming to door looking for her every so often.

It appears he wasn't keep in the loop either about her whereabouts! Which one can kind of expect...

She's back in the house again now and the atmosphere is somewhat calmer.