Podcast 257: Best Excuses for Late Rent

We read off some funny excuses that came over from Property Management Memes on Facebook. This is worth a good chuckle or two…

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Resources Mentioned in this Episode

https://www.facebook.com/Property-Management-Memes-792535127497758/

Show Transcription:

00:00 Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of rent prep for landlords. This is episode number 257 I am your host Eric Worral with rent-prep and in this episode we’re going to be discussing some of the best tenant excuses for late rent. I think this will just be kind of a fun lighthearted episode. Uh, I’ve came across a post online. They had some really good excuses and I thought you guys might get a good kick out of it out to be a short episode today. And then we’ll get back to a in the news stories next week. But uh, let’s get to this right after this..

00:34 1,2,3,4 ya ya ya…. Welcome to the RentPrep for landlords podcast. And now your host, Steven White and Eric Worral.

00:40 So I was researching recent news stories that you guys might find interesting for this episode and it wasn’t coming across anything really great, nothing that was really striking me.

00:48 So I went to go to Facebook to see if there’s anything in our Facebook group. The rentprep for landlords. But before I got there, I saw a post in my newsfeed that was from a Facebook page called property management memes. I know that see a few property managers that kind of run this, uh, particular our Facebook page, but they have this post kind of going viral, uh, at least in the property manager space. Uh, it’s only a couple of hours. All nerdy heads like 70 shares and 500 comments. And the posts is a picture of Steve Harvey from family feud. And then underneath it then, you know, they just made it into a meme and it says name excuse residents will use to pay rent late. So all these people just chiming in with their stories of some of the best excuses they’ve got. And I guess you could call them worse excuses on now why the rent was late.

01:38 So let me see. Uh, let me, I go through a few of these and we’ll read them. And then maybe you guys cannot give your opinion on the best excuses. So one of these was somebody actually took a picture and they wrote down all the excuses from one tenant. She said that she had someone pay late so often that they started writing them down. I excuse the messy writing. She only lived there 16 months. There are 24 excuses. She, she said funds are not free, out of town, family emergencies, stuck at work, medical expenses, uh, for mother-in-law in the hospital, missed the flight. Uh, infusion and med center, a flight home cancel. The tending of memorial service, phone was stolen. Has the flu difficult to purchase without a debit card. Caregiver was supposed to drop off money. Can’t find her husband withdraw right, so that’s just one.

02:27 I know, I can’t, you know, go too far down that rabbit hole because we don’t want to give away every single late rent excuse on one post. Some of these are pretty funny though. Uh, let me see. Ah, this was one of my favorite ones that I read on here from somebody named Tracy. She said that just last month I got, I’m late because of daylight savings time and I forgot to change my clocks. Now, I could see how you’d be an hour late on that one, but a whole day or a week late, that’d be concerning. If that was throwing you off, can you imagine a daylight savings time threw you off for entire days at a time? That’d be a really rough go of things in the spring and fall. Uh, the other one says a head problems paying online. I don’t like night drops and I work, I just want to say as I moved in on the 15th so that’s the day my rent is due. That’s what the previous manager told me and it’s in my lease with one of those crying Emoji faces. And I don’t know if you guys have any problems with people moving in on the 15th or prorating rent. I, it is important to communicate that clearly to them when rent is due so they don’t get confused on that. Some of these I kind of read and I think, wow, did somebody actually communicate it well to the tenant or do we just kind of instantly blaming the tenant? I had to make sure my kids had a nice Easter. You know, it’s a nice thing to say, right? Uh, but, uh, yeah, still got to pay the rent. I spent too much on Amazon. Can I sign a three day hold off and oh yeah, I need to pick up the packages that were just delivered. Oh, that’s a good one. I like that one.

03:57 I was either my apartment bill or my car note while I had to choose. Uh, even though I don’t know what the person’s sounds like, who gave the excuse? I like filling in and you know, like, well, I had to choose, you know, it’s like, it’s so obvious. Uh, this one’s, you know, kind of, uh, a story with a twist. A true story says that I was stressed because I thought I found a lump in my breast. So I went to the doctor and, uh, they said everything was fine. So, you know, I had to go out and celebrate. Now I don’t have enough for rent and I don’t get paid til next week, so I’ll pay you then. Can you waive late fees? I mean, I nearly died. Uh, that last sentence is what got me then nearly died.

04:39 Uh, that’s, that’s funny. All right. Uh, let’s see. There’s some other gems in here. We get like 500 comments. I’m just trying to read some of the better ones here for you. Uh, this one says my bank account got hacked for the fourth time this month. Well, it sounds like you got a pretty severe problem. Uh, he might want to change your passwords. Uh, Ashley wrote, it was paid on time. I put it in Dropbox. I go and check and it’s even dated late. Nice try people. Uh, yeah, I guess if you’re going to, you know, pay late, you should probably try and put the right date on there so you don’t get caught. This one’s pretty simple. Somebody said, I didn’t know my rent amount. It would be concerning as well. Uh, I like the honesty of this one that Elizabeth shared. She said that it said, uh, the tenants that I spent my money at the casino.

05:27 I liked that, you know, that’s pretty, uh, it’s pretty straight up. They know that it’s not a great excuse but going with it anyways, going with the honest approach. Uh, Megan, you’ve got 25 likes on this one. I’m assuming it’s good. I’m ready yet. I says I wasn’t even in the apartment all the month was on vacation. So I see this one pop up, uh, in the run pro Facebook group from time to time, people saying that they have a tenant who’s like either on vacation or even in the hospital for a little bit are there visiting somebody and they don’t want to pay rent for the time that they were on. So I suppose it doesn’t hurt to ask, you know, you do hear that kind of a saying thrown around sometimes, but I think in the case of asking your landlord that it probably would hurt because they’re going to start kind of painting a picture of who you are if you’re trying to get out of like a week of rent because you were on vacation.

06:15 Uh, luckily I haven’t encountered that with any tenants because I’m sure I probably let out and audible laugh if they asked about that. All right, let’s scroll down a little bit further here. See what we got here. I’m kind of just looking to see which ones got the most likes. Let the social proof. Uh, do the research for me here. Uh, let’s see, we got one here. It’s at my ac went out two weeks ago. Did you submit maintenance requests? We don’t have one on file. No, but I’m not paying it because I was out for two weeks and I had to stay at a friends. I said this happened and then maybe about a year ago I’ve seen this one pop up to where like tenants get upset that something isn’t fixed but they actually never submit a maintenance request for it. Uh, that’s kind of a common issue that comes up quite a bit.

06:58 Uh, the only thing you really do with that one is really try and set the stage in the beginning on like communication and making sure that they feel comfortable making a request or like making sure that they feel comfortable letting me know that, hey, there’s a leak or you know, there’s this or that going on. I’ve had this issue with tenants before and I find that I need to go out of my way to tell them, hey, if there’s something wrong, let me know. Uh, I haven’t had a bite me in the, but yet I’m sure he can get a really picky Tynan who all sudden starts going a little crazy. But I’d rather have somebody, you know, nitpicking and then somebody who is letting a leak just kind of a ruin a, an entire apartment or something like that. Cause they didn’t want to say something. So there’s two sides to that coin. This one says, uh, from Natasha, my cat needed to be cremated, especially since she wasn’t allowed pets. Huh? That’s a weird sentence. But I see what she’s getting at there is that she doesn’t have, she’s not allowed to have a pad. So why is it pet being cremated? But that one’s kind of morbid. It was a few more. Everyone’s in here. Uh, let’s see. There is a, your website wasn’t working yet. None of my other 300 residents had an issue.

08:15 Of course you can imagine the Emoji they went with that, uh, you know the eye roll one. So, uh, here’s another one that I think you guys will like. It said, I didn’t receive an invoice. Ah, that’d be a good one. That’d be another one. That’d be hard not to laugh at if you got that. Uh, Joshua wrote one in here. It said, uh, my car got towed because I parked in a fire lane for an hour. So I had to have my car to go to work. So there’s a little bit time packed there. I’m assuming somebody couldn’t get to work and they couldn’t make money because they parked in a fire fire lane or in front of a fire hydrant. So yeah. Uh, this one, uh, from Alicia said, I didn’t get a paycheck. I asked why

08:56 I didn’t. They said I went to beach and went to the beach on vacation for two weeks. I didn’t get a check. Can you reduce my rent for that?

09:07 Uh, that’s so funny. Uh, Courtney, what is she right here? I said, I make plenty of money and you know, I can afford to live here. It’s just my pay is weird. That was one of those ones. Um, I, there was a comedian I listen to, his name is Al Lewis Black. He’s a, he’s a little bit out there, but he says a lot of, a lot of strange things, but he says that once in a while something has said and it goes into your ear and then you can’t get it out of your head. And that’s how, you know, these aneurysms start. I mean he’s making a joke of it, but he said he was standing in line somewhere and somebody said, if it wasn’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college and this kind of what Lewis black sounds like. So he’s like, you know, and then I’m going home when I was saying, you know, what do you mean?

09:51 What if it wasn’t for my horse? I want to spend a year in college and you can’t figure out what it means. I feel like that was like Courtney’s a one right here. I make plenty of money and you know, I can afford to live here. It’s just my pay is weird. Yeah, that’s a tough one to figure out. Uh, let’s see what else we got here. Uh, that, uh, why are you charging a late fee? I told you I was going to be laid ahead of time. Well, you know, that’s, uh, that’s one that’s going have probably boil some blood there for some people. The worst one I ever heard no lie. This person said, Oh, I’m not reading that. Never mind.

10:33 Oh yeah. I don’t know. We don’t want to have to edit that one out. Uh, that, uh, this one said not this time of year, but I’m waiting for my tax return is a long time favorite of mine. So this one’s pretty good. Nick here said that they got robbed. They told us it happened by her car, had time and date, but they didn’t realize that they had a camera there and still tried to say was true. So somebody claiming they got robbed in the parking lot of the apartment complex and uh, yeah, there was a camera on that car and there was no robbery. So that’d be a tough one to, uh, to convince somebody of, you know, you’re not on video for it. What else do we got here? We’ll do a couple more and we’ll wrap things up. Uh, but I don’t get paid until this weekend. I’ll come on. That’s not that interesting. That’s just the classic, that’s like the go to, you know, my, my paycheck’s not coming in until x, y, z. Give me a few days. Uh, this one there, this came from Ashley. It says there are only 30 days in this month. So that means we have until the fourth to pay. Right.

11:37 That one that again is a, I can’t figure that one out. That’s another one that goes in your, you’re, and you’re trying to make sense of it and you can’t, and then you just get sad and you started curling up in a ball and wondering what’s happening in the world. So yeah, it’s this last one. I’m going to give it a, like nobody liked it. Somebody got to give us some Waf instead. I gave some of them my debit card, who I thought I could trust. Yeah. Don’t give people your debit card. It’s a bad idea. You know what? Don’t give them your credit card either. Don’t give him your social security number. Don’t give him a driver’s license. Don’t give me your car. Don’t come to your house keys. I would suggest to keep those things to yourself. And that’s going to be the little nugget of wisdom we’re going to leave you with today.

12:20 Don’t give people your debit card. It’s a bad idea. So hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Uh, yeah. If you want to check it out, you can go over to the APP property management and make sure I get this right. I’ve got to scroll up quite a ways here. Property management, memes on Facebook. They got some funny stuff that comes through once in a while, so I, you guys can check that out. But if you got any funny stories to share, don’t hesitate to reach out to my email, Eric at rent prep dot Comor Sharon in the Facebook group as far as some of your best rent excuses. All right guys, have a great week and I look forward to catching up with you guys next week. All right, take care.