*IF*

power cable water internet etc?? when your roomates still live there?



[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 3:11 PM. Reason : doh!]

8/1/2006 3:11:20 PM

are you using it?

8/1/2006 3:11:45 PM

shit no

8/1/2006 3:12:00 PM

anything you decide to do that wasn't agreed on beforehand should not cause the other tenants cost of living to go up

8/1/2006 3:12:23 PM

well, if you move early then you will still have useage on the next power bill that comes.....if you were my roomate and you skipped out...............I'd hunt you down.

8/1/2006 3:13:33 PM

You should only pay for what you use, and you can calculate it by any means necessary as long as it's agreed upon. I think it's an easy theoretical answer, but the logistics of getting an accurate calculation in divided usage can be cumbersome.

I once had a roommate who was so meticulous about his usage of the shared utilities that he would not settle for paying a portion calculated by a division by the number of people living in the place.
He would insist on calculating tax ratios for individual services such as telephone as bundled in a service package, and paying by what he apportioned as fair usage. I never criticized it very much because it was a difference of pennies.
I just relished in the fact that in instances of 0.333 cents owed on my part, I would pay nothing and leave him to contribute the extra penny from his share. I think I enjoyed it simply because he was so meticulous yet had such a glaring oversight on the simplest of all calculations. While he was busy earning fractions of cents by his tax ratio calculations, I was billing him for a third of a penny every cycle unjustly.

I guess what makes it funny to me is that he was an electrical engineer who prided himself on his mathematical prowess, and he was so competitive. When it was all said and done, he still paid a few more pennies than I did.

Obviously you might not go to this extreme, but.....just pay what you owe, no more, no less.

8/1/2006 3:23:01 PM

the jew in me wants to say dont pay if you dont use it, but at the same time, i'd hate to have a roomate that did that to me, causing me to have to pay more

8/1/2006 3:25:19 PM

Stuff like cable is $80 a month whether it's being split between 2 or 4 people. Keep paying for stuff like that.

8/1/2006 3:26:30 PM

Simply put i would cancel everything and leave if no one else lived there.
so it would cost me nothing.

8/1/2006 3:27:21 PM

lol that's quality right there....


but, if they will have to all pay more just because you decided to leave then I think you may be sol.... as in they will want something, especially if the lease was broken...

that said if you were to return you would have to pay at least a token monthly rate for that stuff while you are gone like for electricity you pay just to have it connected, home or not, same with water, cable you'd have to pay a full share of still as it's not an 'amount' based cost.

the token amounts would be like $10 for power a month and some amount ( I dunno I don't pay water) for water.

8/1/2006 3:27:38 PM

THIS MIGHT SOUND GAY BUT

drunknloaded, I always enjoy reading your posts. They're accurate and sincere.

8/1/2006 3:27:51 PM

the lease wasn't broken... i paid my portion of the rent (30 bucks more than theirs)
cause my room was bigger...

i mean if i was good friends with them i def would but i moved out for a reason.
but my conscience can't decide if i owe them 130 bucks in utilities or not... i know i'm giving them 50
but i dunno if i should give them all of it.

8/1/2006 3:31:41 PM

nah, pay the token power and water, and your share of the cable and be done with it

8/1/2006 3:36:29 PM

^^^thanks man, i appreciate it

8/1/2006 3:38:58 PM

I always saw cable utility as a sort of public good in the apartment.

It was based on user share and not quantified in terms of service. In other words, you can't really quantify how many hours you watch television and allot a billing statement accordingly. It's either all or nothing as far as taking a share in the service, and you moved out.

You would fall into the "nothing" category for the billing cycle after vacating.

Furthermore, if they squelched you into paying a greater portion of the rent simply because you had more space in your room, then they were nickeling and diming you anyway. I say don't pay for anything out of service obligation. Time Warner is not contractual like rent contracts. They are month to month.
Users have the ability to cancel at any time, and they could have canceled the service after your departure. Since they decided not to do that, the share of keeping the service is their decision, and therefore it is their payment responsibility.

At the real mathematical core of this argument, water and power are quantifiable into units of consumption.

Cable enters the ethereal concepts of domiciles, and it would be discretionary what would qualify you as a part of that. If you did partake in services in a partial billing cycle, grasping what you owe for something in the ethereal world of evaluating media consumption would be more difficult, but you could probably agree on something.

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 3:51 PM. Reason : ]

8/1/2006 3:39:50 PM

Quote :

"Furthermore, if they squelched you into paying a greater portion of the rent simply because you had more space in your room, then they were nickeling and diming you anyway."

i think this is one of the few legitimate reasons to pay more for rent. He probably had the choice to move in the bigger room and pay more rent. I've lived in several situations like that. Wouldn't you be pissed if you had the smallest room but pd the same rent as the guy with the biggest?

^^^^just pay what you owe and be done with it. That's all anyone can really expect, right?

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 3:50 PM. Reason : ^]

8/1/2006 3:49:41 PM

Just have a beer and go for a drive to think it over more clearly.

8/1/2006 4:01:09 PM

unexpected/short notice (less than 20 days) early move--i'd prolly pay a prorated amount of what i used (water/power comes after its use) and one months worth to help out if they didn't have someone lined up to move in. if they did manage to find someone to move in, i'd only pay my prorated amount of bils.

expected early move--i'd only pay my prorated amount of bills

all of this of course if something wasn't agreed upon beforehand

8/1/2006 4:08:29 PM

^^you must not read tww too often...he recently got a dui, plus drinking and driving isnt cool man

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 4:08 PM. Reason : .]

8/1/2006 4:08:34 PM

In my experience, the social consequences of paying more for a room can impact the relationship. Each person should pay an equal share and then there can be no implicit sense of entitlement. I supose there are a lot of variables at work here, and maybe I just found a method that makes sense in certain circumstances.

8/1/2006 4:08:43 PM

id be damned if i was going to pay the same amount as a roomate of mine who had a room more then twice the size of mine and his own bathroom.

8/1/2006 4:10:59 PM

^^then how do you decide who gets the bigger room? If it was something random like drawing straws, i would be far more pissed if luck shit on me than if i had to pay a little more b/c i chose it.

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 4:13 PM. Reason : ^^]

8/1/2006 4:13:03 PM

^^oh HELL yeah...i had the large room and my own bathroom, i paid more...poor gal that had the small closet like space for a room and shared a bathroom with the other roommate most DEFINITELY paid less. only makes sense.

of course brad, we lived in the same neighborhood so that's just how it went down

^easy...sometimes financial situations can play apart in who gets the bigger room. not just drawing straws.

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 4:14 PM. Reason : ]

8/1/2006 4:13:42 PM

Quote :

"anything you decide to do that wasn't agreed on beforehand should not cause the other tenants cost of living to go up"

fuck that. work something out with your roommates at least but I'm not going to pay for my ex-roommates to have an internet and cable discount each month just because shit happened in my life and I had to move out early. especially if omarbadu was my roommate.

8/1/2006 4:16:17 PM

I guess I am a contractual purist. I see it that there is really no obligation to divide costs by a formula of ratios determined by bedroom floorspace.
I have occupied a big room and paid more.
I have also occupied a smaller room and paid less.
I have also equally distributed rent for rooms of various sizes and secretly felt like I was getting away with the best deal.

I guess it just comes down to personal style of living, and I think that it was a shared attitude that each roommate felt they were getting the better end of the deal by paying no more than the next guy.

I will concede my argument on a threshold of compromise. It would unrealistic to pay the same price to occupy a bedroom in an apartment that was less than half the size of someone else's, but I haven't seen many modern complexes that really vary room sizes that significantly.

Determining what should be paid for occupying a larger room could come down to a percentage threshold. If the master is less than ten percent larger than the smallest bedroom, then I think that it shouldn't be that big of a deal. It also comes down to time spent in the commons areas.

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 4:54 PM. Reason : ]

8/1/2006 4:52:53 PM

D&L.... he's an asshole that brings it up every thread of mine i have
he knows about my situation.

cypher is another douche too scared to let someone know who they are.


[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 10:29 PM. Reason : .]

8/1/2006 10:26:52 PM

i left the country for 4 weeks and still paid for my half of all the shit even though it was bullshit on the utilities

cable & internet i can understand since its a fixed cost and all that but the utlities thing was bullshit, i just didnt feel like dealing with it and it was worth the $40 or whatever it cost me to just avoid the whole drama

8/1/2006 10:43:04 PM

Quote :

"anything you decide to do that wasn't agreed on beforehand should not cause the other tenants cost of living to go up"

8/1/2006 10:44:30 PM

fuck 'em

8/1/2006 10:51:40 PM

well my roommates took care of my cat while i was gone but i gave them a sweet ass ceiling fan that cost about $150 and a desk that cost $100

8/1/2006 10:53:30 PM

What the hell fan costs that much?

8/1/2006 10:55:29 PM

$150? Hell, I wouldn't pay that much for swimfan.

8/1/2006 11:00:11 PM

^

8/1/2006 11:01:31 PM

i didnt buy it

my ex bought it for me

so i didnt give a shit about it

the fan blade things were reversable so you could have dark wood or light wood and the light part was nice too

but still the fan had value and i gave it to them

8/1/2006 11:05:36 PM

Quote :

"anything you decide to do that wasn't agreed on beforehand should not cause the other tenants cost of living to go up"

8/1/2006 11:12:01 PM

I would just ask them what they expect (If you've lived with them this long you should be able to talk about stuff), or if they think it would be fair you to not have to pay for what you're not using. If they say its not fair that they pick up an unexpected expense, then I'd just pay it.

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 11:13 PM. Reason : o]

8/1/2006 11:13:01 PM

^^ this is true

but you could argue that by you not being in the apartment for x amount of time that the utilties such as water and power would go down because one less person is using them

the remainder of rent & your portion of cable & internet should be taken care of

i beg to differ on utilities

[Edited on August 1, 2006 at 11:14 PM. Reason : hdjhdf]

8/1/2006 11:13:52 PM