U.S. landlords who use RealPage products to set prices on rental apartments are facing accusations of collusion.
  • A group of lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the United States
  • A complaint filed by Washington D.C.’s Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider
  • RealPage recommends prices for roughly 4.5 million housing units in the United States
  • RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions

A group of renters in the U.S. say their landlords are using software to deliver inflated rent hikes.

“We’ve been told as tenants by employees of Equity that the software takes empathy out of the equation. So they can charge whatever the software tells them to charge,” said Kevin Weller, a tenant at Portside Towers since 2021.

Tenants say the management started to increase prices substantially after giving renters concessions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
    0·
    9 months ago

    I mean I’m glad it worked out right in the end. At the time I was just pissed, though.

    Also, holy shit, I went back to look up some of the saga in my old emails, and there were definitely parts that were entertaining that I’d totally forgotten about. If you liked reading the summary check this out – this is a short excerpt from one of some very long email exchanges I had about the whole thing:

    Hey, I just logged in to look at sending a check for this month and I still see a balance for last month. Did you decide not to cash my check? I’m not paying additional fees. I’m fine paying for my utilities. Charging me a late fee when I had a credit, that you didn’t decide to apply until after the bill was due, is ridiculous. Charging me a fee to store my credit card, when you’re refusing to un-store my credit card when I ask you to, is ridiculous. Again my bank’s take on it when I talked to them about it was that it “sounds illegal.” I’m sorta shocked that people put up with this + do business with you. Anyway let me know - just like last month, I’m fine sending you a check for what I actually owe you.

    We have not received a check for your previous balance at this time. Once your check has been applied to the previous balance, you will receive an email notification. Until then, the full balance is still due on your account.

    Okay, sure. I just sent via certified mail a check for $248.93. That represents:

    • $299.96, the amount currently on my account according to you for the past 2 months.
    • -$4 for the card storage fee from this bill (again, please stop storing my card; your system will not allow me to remove it)
    • -$4 for the card storage fee from March’s invoice
    • -$8.11 for late fee from March’s invoice
    • -$5.08 for late fee from February’s invoice
    • -$4.84 for late fee from January’s invoice
    • -$25 for returned item fee from January’s invoice (I told you not to bill me, because I didn’t owe you money - I’m happy that you eventually applied my credit to this balance instead of trying to collect more without authorization, but me putting a stop on you trying to bill me without authorization for money I don’t owe you is 100% legitimate)

    So in total $248.93. If there’s anything above you feel like is justified let me know … if (management agency) tries to take collection action against me for any of the nonsense above I plan to defend myself. I’m happy paying utilities and will not be paying random additional amounts of money. Hopefully that seems reasonable but whether or not it’s acceptable to you, it’s what I’ll be doing. IDK why you guys do business this way, but best of luck with it I guess. So the check, I sent to this address:

    (photo)

    Like this:

    (photo)

    The post office said they couldn’t find your address. The best they could find was this (and I swear this is what they showed me, I’m not being funny):

    (photo - their address is on Ritchie Road, but the post office I swear to God corrected it to “Bitchie Road”)

    So, that’s where I sent it, certified mail. They said expected delivery is May 25th. Again, best of luck.

    There’s more, including me threatening to charge them a late fee for the time when they owed me money and weren’t willing to credit it back to me, but that’s as much as I had time to dig back up right now.

    • CustodialTeapot@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 months ago

      I 100% believe we should charge companies a fee for any mistakes they made that we had to spend time correcting.

      I know banks do this in the UK if you complain and they’re in the wront.

      All companies should do this. Watch how fast they’d fix their shit when there’s a fincial penny related to shit service.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        0·
        9 months ago

        “Corporations are people” in the U.S. when it comes to privileges, but never when it comes to penalties.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
        0·
        9 months ago

        Fuckin’ don’t get me started.

        When I stopped the payment with my bank in January, their system refused to let me use ACH payments anymore, and said I had to put in a credit card number in order to even log in and see my balance and history. Okay, sure. I put in a credit card number for a cash card that didn’t have any money on it.

        Then, their system said that I couldn’t remove my credit card number from their system without putting in some other payment method (which had to be another credit card). But, in order to have a card number stored in their system (which I couldn’t remove), I had to pay a $4 per month credit card storage fee.

        This was when I started just mailing them checks and researching lawyers in Texas so I could take them to small claims court. I also sent the whole thing with documentation to the FTC explaining it as succinctly as I could.

        • acceptable_pumpkin@lemmy.world
          0·
          9 months ago

          What I read “ … Texas …”. Ouch, sorry to read that. I doubt that is legal in other states (or rather I’m sure it’s illegal in some other states).

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        0·
        9 months ago

        Every credit card number is engraved on a golden plate which is stored in a special nuclear war-proof bunker and guarded by men with automatic weapons and combat armor.

        You can’t expect all that for free.