Suggestions for a landlord that is ripping me off!

[American Student]

Hello everyone.

So here is the short story. I lived in Reims with my 3 friends from August 2009 until February 2010. We were there for a study abroad. We bought all the furniture from previous tenants who we knew from school. When we were moving out, we sold all of our furniture to our landlord. She came from england for the EDL, said everything looked fine (aside from dirty floors which we washed) and that we should get almost all of our deposit back. 2 months later we get a check for our deposit and a letter from her. around 300 euros was taken out of the SECURITY deposit because she found some of the FURNITURE items we sold to her weren't in "saleable condition". So she spent 300 euros on cleaning and replacing items - (she even charged us more than we charged her for some items stating that she didn't expect to have to replace items so we incur a fee for this) This is ridiculous - sure everything wasn't in perfect condition, but it was discounted from when we bought 6 months earlier and in nearly the same condition. But this really shouldn't matter at all because the transaction had NOTHING to do with the security deposit. What can we do? We are in Paris now, and I really don't want her to get away with this. Thanks for any suggestions! (we already emailed her voicing our concerns but to no avail - she claims a Parisian lawyer said what she is doing is legal)

- a frustrated and stressed student

[Mikep]

If she has the money in hand, you're always going to be in a weak position. Were you studying at a recognized institution (University/Intetnational school)? If so, your best course may be to contact the Accommodation officer there and get her blacklisted, or better still threaten to do so if you don't get at least some of your money. It seems likely that she will rely on regular lets to students - she won't want to jeopardize her future business. She may settle for "splitting the difference".

All part of your education - and a good education is always expensive!

Don't even think of using lawyers - you'll just throw good money after bad.

Please don't judge all Europeans by her standards!

[American Student]

Hey Mikep, thanks for the suggestion. I think I will indeed threaten to email both schools (my school from the states and the exchange school). And yeah I wasn't thinking about lawyers, but maybe small claims court - you don't need a lawyer for that and although a bit of an inconvenience it would be an experience haha!

And don't worry, I know that my landlord is an exception - Europeans are great!