Fraudulent second landlord
Second landlord’s name: Kloos ;
House address: Boxbergring ;
Rent ad: https://www.wg-gesucht.de/wg-zimmer-in-Heidelberg-Boxberg.2378057.html
Case Overview:
I rented a house online for the first time in Germany. I paid a total of 900 euros to the second landlord Alex. I also replenished the refrigerator with food and other items. I started moving in on June 23, 2022. One week later, at the end of June, Alex Prompting me to pay next month's rent again, he said, "German law stipulates that if you rent a house on a monthly basis, even if you only live one day a month, you must pay the entire month's rent, and the rent will be calculated from the beginning of the month.
I thought this was fraud and was not happy to continue paying. I asked for a refund when I checked out. Alex just wanted to argue with me. He opened his empty wallet and said that the money had been spent. In other words, he spent all my 900 euros within a week. Where to spend it? Maybe I bought cigarettes. This second landlord is a standard big chimney.
Because I had something to do and I left, I mistakenly left the key behind. When I wanted to go back to live again, Alex refused.
It cost me almost 1,000 euros to live in a dirty apartment for just one week, and I had to wash a pile of dirty dishes for Alex every day, but Alex claimed that I did nothing for him, and he provided me with a full The cheapest apartment in Heidelberg must use labor in exchange for low rent, but this is not included in the agreement.
Other reasons for retiring:
Alex lives with us, he does not clean the common areas or cook, but requires us to clean the house for him, there is a pile of dirty dishes almost every day, and another Syrian student cooks for him. We couldn't resist working for him or he would be very unhappy. His reason is that "there is no cheaper house in Heidelberg" and we must use labor in exchange for low rent;
Some of his living habits and behaviors are weird. It turns out that he is a greedy and lustful person. He has some insults and discriminatory remarks against our tenants (foreigners and refugees). Living with him makes people feel quite uncomfortable;
According to what he said, he didn't have to work, he just stayed in the garden and lived a leisurely life. Every day was like a vacation. There were dozens of empty cigarette boxes piled up in the room. If he didn't work, where would the money for smoking come from? There may be many other tenants who have been defrauded like me.
It is obvious that this middle-aged second landlord does not work and lives on a pension, and at the same time defrauds some new immigrants and international students to obtain pocket money for smoking.
He also had many strange experiences of insulting people's IQ. After I left, I realized that his behavior and thinking were abnormal, and he had some social difficulties.
Protect rights and interests
When I was looking for a house online, I encountered many rental scams. Fortunately, I have experience in identifying online scams, but I still haven't avoided the trap of offline scams. Those who have been victimized should go together to defend their rights, regardless of language or race. Everyone should help each other. If you can organize a team of dozens of people, hold slogans and banners, chase and intercept the landlord, block the door of the house, and see how the media reacts.
If someone posts help for rights protection, as long as I am in the city where the crime occurred, I will definitely be happy to participate in rights protection actions.
These experiences show that newly arrived foreigners do not receive fair social security. The police, government and even NGOs will not care about these matters. Rights protection can only rely on spontaneous organizations.
Fraud is common
We thought that fraud was rare in Europe. This is a developed country with laws and civilization, and the brilliance of humanity shines everywhere. However, we soon discovered that this is not the case. Then, I checked some forums and chat groups and found that many new international students and foreigners had experienced rental scams.
My Airbnb neighbor Dominik is from Poland. He currently works in a supermarket. He said that he had the same bad rental experience last month and was planning to find a lawyer to get his 1,000 euro deposit back.
My loss was 800 euros, which was enough for us to buy food for two months, or one and a half months' rent. For us who are new here, this is a lot of loss.
I am going to work with Dominik to protect our rights. He wants to hire a lawyer from his hometown in Poland, because we are not familiar with German lawyers. Maybe this is the right path, but it is not clear how expensive the lawyer's fees are.
Report to relevant departments
Rental website https://www.wg-gesucht.de/
Tenants Association https://www.mieterverein-heidelberg.de/service/unsere-leistungen
https://www.mieterbund.de/
https://www.recht.de/
Heidelberg Government https://www.heidelberg-fluechtlinge.de/Fluechtlingshilfe/Startseite/kontakt.html
Refugee NGO https://www.caritas-heidelberg.de/
Starting from June 30, 2022, I have reported this case to multiple departments above.
I first sent a complaint email to the rental website WG-gesucht, and they replied: "Sorry, there is nothing we can do about the fraud in the advertising. It should be reported to the local police station or tenants association";
So I called the police station in the area and emailed the police and the government, and they responded with either "Nothing can be done, it's not their responsibility, they should see a lawyer" or "What's the problem?", and then no response;
I sent an email to the Tenants Association again and waited for 3 months with no reply.
Finally, I sent an email to Caritas, an NGO that engages in refugee consultation. I have had many communications with them in the past few months and they have all my personal background information. However, after I left the refugee camp, they did not provide any consultation with me. any response;
From beginning to end, I have not received an effective response from any of the above departments.
Related file network disk connection: ****
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