Interesting day... or two.

When I went to bed Sunday night, I was expecting Monday to be a great day. I am not one of those people that wake up every day jump out of bed, excited to be awake... I have to pry my butt out of bed in the morning after hitting the snooze bar about a zillion times... But Monday, I got out of bed happy... I finally had something to be excited about: The son of my tenant had given me a check on Sunday to pay for his mother's back rent ($1,200). I couldn't wait to deposit it in my bank account and finally have enough money to pay some of my slightly overdue bills, and still have a few bucks to spend... So I didn't waste any time, I logged online and scheduled my bills to be paid. Unfortunately, the day didn't turn out to be a great day, as a matter of fact, it turned out to be be one of my bad days... Which recently has all I have been having. Enough of my whining... on to the story. I skipped out of work for a few minutes so I could deposit the check early. At the bank while I was waiting in line to deposit the check, I looked over and read the little sign explaining when deposited funds will be available, and my mood and smile broadened when I read that checks drawn this bank are available the same day. Woo Hoo, no fees because the check didn't clear fast enough!!! I walked up to the teller with the check, deposit slip and my toothy smile on my face. The smile faded within seconds as the teller returns the check to me and flatly says "We can't take this check." "WHAT?!!?" My jaw dropped, and I couldn't help but keep the attitude out of my voice. I thought they were pulling a joke on me at first, since all of the tellers know me well. She wasn't smiling and she explained that she wasn't "pulling my leg". There were no funds in the son's account and the check would "bounce" and cost me money if I were to deposit it. My good mood went from extreme glee to extreme gloom. I yanked out my cell phone and immediately dialed the tenant's son, and was rewarded with a message from Verizon saying the person I was attempting to call was unavailable... All I could think was "that jerk had given me a bad check and skipped town!!!" The mood shifted from gloom to doom! I wanted to strangle him right then and there! All I could think of was all of the scheduled electronic payments I had setup based on this check being deposited today, and all of the bank fees I was going to be charged without the funds in the account. It was going to cost me a small fortune! The tellers were felling bad, and the branch manager did a little research and without giving out too much private information said that I would "be trying to be get water from a stone," based on what she was seeing in his account history. I stormed out of the bank and immediately started calling everyone I could think of. I called his mother (my tenant), his sister, his employer, and his previous employer. Everyone I could think to call. Of the few people I was able to talk with told me that he has a history of being a little less than trustworthy. The mother only knew "he said he would take care of everything". His sister never called me back. His employer said he hadn't seen him in a month and a half, and that he had been "fired from his previous job too". His previous employer said he was trying to contact him also, because he had some equipment from the company that was never returned. The worst part was that no one seemed to know how to get a hold of him. I left work, and drove around my home town looking for him. I drove past his house, knocked on his door. I knocked on his mother's door. No one was home. I gave up driving around after an hour and went back to the phones. "Sweetie" recommended I call his mother (my tenant) at her work, and that idea worked (Thanks Sweetie!). She said she had heard my message I left on her voice mail, and that his cell phone's prepaid minutes had run out, and she had no way to get a hold of him. She said he would probably be around after she got home from work at 3:30 and would talk to him then. Some how word must of have finally reached him, and he called shortly after I talked with his mother. He apologized profusely (too much actually), saying he had mistakenly used the wrong checking account. He promised to be at my place within the hour to make it all better. After all of the things I had heard from his previous employers I didn't really hold my breath. After waiting about 5 hours, about 4:30 in the afternoon and multiple calls from him postponing and postponing, I had pretty much given up. At about 6PM he called to tell me his girlfriend was just in a car accident, and that he has to go to the hospital to be with her. He told me that she wasn't really hurt, but just getting checked out to be sure. He "promised" would be stopping at my house after she was released. He knocked on my door at midnight. Yeah you read that correctly 12:00AM. As soon as his foot crossed the threshold he once again started with the excessive apologies and a half hearted explanation. He handed me $800 in cash, $400 less than he owes me and made some meaningless promise about how by 10:30 the next day he would give me the remaining $400, plus an additional $600 for the rent due in December. If you are a betting person, you probably bet that 10:30 the next morning came and went without a phone call or a knock, and you would be right. However, his mother did stop over around 11:00 with $200 in cash, still $200 short. She said he would be over later in the afternoon with the rest. I did not get the remaining money until today (Wednesday) at 11AM. He gave me an extra $50 towards next month's rent, and of course made another promise about how he would have the rest of December's rent by Friday. I believe I will be lucky to see that amount before December's rent is due on the 3rd. Tuesday morning I made an appointment with my attorney and got the scoop on what I could do to evict my tenant and what my legal options were to press charges for the bad check. None of the options were a quick solution to my problem, but I am armed with a good deal of information to help minimize this from happening again in the future. After it was all said and done, the tenant is now current, they are planning to stay through December, but said the plan to move out at the first of the year. Personally I was happy with them moving out this month, but with the signed lease I am pretty much obligated to let them stay there as long as they pay the rent. I was really, really hoping I could put the eviction notice on the door, but now I get to save that privilege for Christmas eve! :-) Yeah, that's how nasty I feel right now! Later Lou