does this sound shitty?

four torn window screens: $200
lawn not mowed: $50
bottom oven not clean enough: $30
freezer not defrosted enough: $25

and that's just a few of them. and i'm not going to go into whether they're even true or were our fault.

The middle 2 sound reasonable, the top and bottom ones seem ridiculous.

How did those screens get torn anyhow? Repair cost for a screen is pretty small and the cost of matls even smaller. You could take them out and down to Schreiners hardware and get out for under $30-$40-$50 .

Thawing out the freezr is just a horseshit charge. Maybe someone should tell these people about the wave of modernization that happened in refrigerator technology about 30 years ago.

When my wife and I lived in San Francisco, we had the mother of all ass-bag landlords: French (dual citizen—the guy spent summers in France); obnoxious (was that redundant?); and misogynistic as hell. The freakin' guy VERBALLY ASSAULTED my wife once and made her cry (because of a busted intercom that noone else ever bothered to report to him.) Anyway, yeah, I still hate that jackass...

When we moved, we totally expected a fight over the deposit (which was large, at SF rent prices. I think it was 2,500 bucks.) He'd screwed every other tenant who'd moved out in the time we'd been in the building (or at least all the ones we'd talked to.. 4 or 5 different ones.) He was such an ass to deal with, most just left it and ran.

SO... my wife evacuated the place, waited in the car (she wouldn't even talk to him by this time, is how bad relations got); I'd warned him a couple weeks in advance that we were leaving the state and expected no problems with our apartment—told him to bring a check, that we wanted our deposit in-hand before turning over the keys.

I have no idea about the legality of this, either in California or in Ohio, I'm just sayin' what worked. He probably could've cited some '10-day wait' clause or something, but I didn't want to give him several days alone in the place to cook up some bullshit 'carpet looks funky' or 'drapes have mold' excuses.

And then... and I'm convinced that this is what did the trick. As we started the walkthrough, I casually pulled a camcorder from my bag.. "Oh, I just thought I'd videotape the walkthrough, in case we need to refer to it later." Heh. The asshole didn't know what to think. I recorded him poking at closets and opening/closing everything. Turning on the oven, checking all the sinks. Even taped the bastard writing out the check (in case he tried to halt payment on it later.)

We got the full deposit (he was actually legally entitled to keep $150 dollars of it for carpet-cleaning fees, but must've been flustered.) It felt like my only victory against that jerk, after 5 years of muddled losses.

Thank you, for your wine, California.

If you want to dispute something, PUT IT IN WRITING. Most landlords/rental companies have systems in place for disputing things like that. I got 125 bucks back from Sawmill Ravine when they tried to charge us for one coat of white paint (we didn't damage/paint the walls in any way). I'd say the cleaning charges are about average, and if you break it down, the screens were 50 each. When you told them about the screens when you moved in, was anything in writing?

I guess at the very last, you can always contact the Student Housing Legal Clinic,

Again, PUT IT IN WRITING if you dispute it. (with sawmill ravine, this even gave us 30 more days to pay for the charges)