Need advice

[rebeccajo99]

I have some of my stuff in a consignment shop which has a small rent fee. The rent is due the first of every month. I just received my august commission check and my Sept rent was taken out of it. I looked at the date on the check and it was written on August 27, which was the same day as I mailed my check and 5 days before rent is due.

Obviously I'm going to say something as I don't want to pay double rent, but should I just let her apply this money for Oct rent, have her credit my account so I get that money with my next commission check or should I ask that she sends it to me?

I don't want to be mean, but at the same time it irritates me that she deducted it from my check before rent was even due.

[LuminousBoutique]

Stand up for yourself.. either way. if you dont, it could simply repeat over and over. Shes taking advantage, or it was a mistake.. either way you wont know unless you ask!! If you are happy with being there... I'd say jsut credit it to October, because I'm a huge fan of having things paid in advance (one less worry, lol!) but if you need it for supplies or other, have her credit that puppy!!

good luck

Edited September 3, 2010 by LuminousBoutique

[Kitn]

What kind of agreement do you have with the owner?

[rebeccajo99]

The portion in my lease that is in regards to rent states "Monthly payments shall be due and payable on or before the 1st calender day of the month. In the event that payment is not received by the 5th calender day of the month, a late fee of $20 will be assessed to the Tenant. Landlord further reserves the right to withhold settlement checks from Tenant until payments are brought current. In the event that payment is not received by the 10th calender day of the month, Tenant will be considered in defalt of the erms and conditions of this lease" I mailed my check for Sept. on the 28th of August. (Sorry, I was off a day in my first post. I was thinking the 27th was Saturday)

The portion in my lease in regards to commission checks reads "Pay period cutoff is the last day of each month. Landlord agrees to pay to Tenant all amounts collected for sales of Tenant's items, less deductions, by the 5th business day following the close of the pay period." The commission check is dated Aug 27.

So to me, it seems that she is in volation of the lease and she should send me my money, but I just don't know how much of a "stink" I should be. Last couple of months checks have been really small (just covers the rent and cost of goods). I don't know if that is because it is summer or because she moved my stuff. I was going to see what the holiday season brought.

[deb426]

Maybe you could just call her and ask if she got your rent check. If she did, maybe she didn't deposit it yet and can send it back to you.

[Judiee]

From your post I do not see a stipulation that rent will be deducted from commission checks. The rent you sent needs to be credited to the following month and not deducted in the future. Your rent checks are your audit trail that you are actually paying the rent as contracted. IMO if problems develop I'd pull the product out.

[Sharon in KY]

I would tell her the rent and sales need to be kept separate. Your accountant says so. So give her the check back tell her to write another for commission/sales and you write one for rent.

[Candybee]

I would tell her the rent and sales need to be kept separate. Your accountant says so. So give her the check back tell her to write another for commission/sales and you write one for rent.

This sounds like a good idea to me. I'd also be careful about applying the rent to next month. I'd pay as I go. If she is goofing up on the rent it can happen again and you may want to pull your stuff out in a hurry.

[rebeccajo99]

Thanks guys. I just checked my bank account and it isn't showing it has cleared yet, so maybe she didn't deposit it yet (or maybe it got lost in the mail)

I'll shoot her an e-mail just to see if she got my check first. I hate confrintation, so that will give me some time to think how I'm going to approch her:)

[rebeccajo99]

Well, I heard back about if she received my check or not. She said that she just deposited several checks, and to let her know if it doesn't clear in the next couple of days. I would have thought she could look up my account and say... yes I received it or no I have not.

I'm now starting to question her bookkeeping. I hate to think this because maybe she was busy and didn't get a chance to look it up, but I e-mailed it. So, it wasn't like I was waiting on the phone. If she had a customer, she could have looked it up and responded when she was done helping them.

I don't know

[Judy, USMC]

It appears she wrote the August vendor checks early, too.

It may have been a timing problem. The normal sequence of events is: the rent checks come in on or before the first, the monthly sales for the month are totaled, the rent is paid, the vendors are paid. That way all the store income is in the bank before the bills and vendors are paid.

Don't know why they would have written vendor checks before the end of the month but there are a variety of possible reasons. They may have decided to write the rent check and then realized they didn't have enough in the account to pay all the vendors so decided to deduct the next month's rent. They may have written the checks early because the accountant was going on vacation; it could be they changed accountants and the books needed to be balanced before the change over; or it could indicate they have a cash flow problem especially if they have just recently opened.

I would not expect the terms to be modified without your agreement. The only instance I could see for them holding out the rent is if you were late with the rent in the past. In that case it should have already been written in to the agreement.

You deserve an explanation of what happened. If you feel they are stalling you it may take a trip for a face-to-face to get this resolved. If your check was cashed then I would ask for reimbursement of the rent deduction they kept and request they stick to the agreement. I would expect any modifications to be addressed prior to them being enforced ~ and done in writing.

Sorry for the lengthy comment - but it is a complicated problem especially since we don't know the reason they changed.

[Faerywren]

If she had deposited checks, but didn't know if yours was one of them, she obviously didn't check names against accounts to bring people's rent etc up to date. You definitely need to see what is going on with her bookkeeping.

[Candybee]

She says she deposited some checks but can't tell you if one is yours and to just wait to see if it clears? Wow! Time to take this up with her and get it straightened out. Just another reason to not pay a months rent in advance. Her bookkeeping is questionable.

[rebeccajo99]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I'm going to bring it up with her and ask for her to give me my money for the rent back. I'm also going to ask her not to do it again. I know rent isn't a lot, but money is tight on my end because I'm new and still trying to recover the costs from all of my testing. Sales are also low because I'm new. I don't have the repeat customers and people are just not buying yet because of the economy.

I'm sure she has her reasons on why she did it, but she also didn't even give me a chance to get rent in before it was due or let me know she was doing it. She could have just shot me an e-mail saying, I'm deducting rent from your commission check this month. I would have told her no, I'll drop it off by tomorrow (or today, depending on what time I got the e-mail), but a heads up would have been nice.

Ok, I'm done venting