Conrad Is A Jaded Cynical Empiricist
'Trust but verify' is my default. So, I had 'Save To Watch Later' a Youtube from 'Daily Dose Of Reddit', concerning the poster 'RK93' and their tale of 'Slumlord Lost His Business Over A $300 Security Deposit'. When I went over it and annotated, various questionable things caught my eye. Art!
This comes into play later
I shall deal with these Questionable Things in due course. How long will this Intro be? I have no idea; it took up a good page-and-a-half of A4 notes, so we'll see. As usual, RK omitted any mention of placenames or dates or even which South Canadian state he was in, nor could I find any supporting or detracting statements on teh Interwebz.
SO! RK, wife and new-born moved into a small, dirty and badly-maintained house that was rented out by PAinting Business Litigious Owner, hereafter PABLO. Given the state of it, the security deposit was only $300. The HVAC did not work, nor did the fridge or dishwasher. RK and fam didn't have much money, hence the move. He paints a picture of PABLO's personality, and it's safe to say it is verrrry unpleasant; when asked to make repairs he would swear or leave threatening voicemails, as well as turning up at random and letting himself in. This is illegal; a landlord has to give at least 24 hours notice before entering a renter's property. Art!
On one of these intrusive visits RK pointed to the flooded crawlspace, which bred mosquitoes and cockroaches by the thousand, that then infested the house above. Typically, PABLO blamed RK for the flooding when it was actually from piping that had rusted through. His response was for them to move out because 'You can't pay for a bargain and expect to live in the Ritz'. Art!
Other facets of PABLO's charming personality were not paying someone who spent all day felling trees, punching a neighbour in the face and renting squalid properties to illegals, since they didn't dare complain. A peach of a person.
Taking his advice, they moved out and PABLO said he would mail them the security deposit. Plot twist: he didn't. He dodged RK's phone calls and eventually responded 'You aren't getting it back. You broke the contract when you left early, so go <swear> yourself.'
Here Conrad would like to add that this is nonsense. RK could have gotten the deposit back by sending a formal letter to PABLO, and if it wasn't returned, could have taken him to the small claims court. There is no mention of him reporting PABLO to the city's enforcement authority, who would have come down on him and his 15 properties like an anvil from a mile up. Conrad, being a vindictive soul, would also have informed the Internal Revenue Service via their whistle-blower hotline that PABLO was fiddling his taxes, since a bottomhole like him most definitely would be. Art!
The marque that evildoers fear
In the follow-up to this, RK was attempting to post a negative review of PABLO when he noticed that his business's website domain had lapsed. We can presume RK had a certain degree of familiarity with web domains and design, since he immediately bought the domain.
Aha! Here he drops the information that the platform was GoDaddy and the year was 2013. No surprise I couldn't find information about a cold case 13 years old.
ANYWAY AGAIN RK added a homepage to the website, with contact details -
For PABLO's principal competitor. He then e-mailed PABLO, asking if he wanted to buy his old domain back for $320 - that security deposit and the cost of acquiring the website. Predictably the bottomhole exhibited prime bottomhole behaviour, ringing to threaten RK, then his parents, then his employer, then sending threats via voicemail.
He refused to pay.
Consequently, the website's contact details didn't get updated, continuing to divert customers to the competitor.
Let Conrad The Jaded Cynic pronounce judgement here. What happened up to this point is credible. What follows is considerably less so. Art!
'Bottomhole painting business' courtesy AI Art Generator
RK got e-mails from people interesting in contracting with PABLO, sending one to his ex-landlord to prove that he's getting potential customers.
Here the question must be why PABLO didn't just get another website? There's no explanation in the narrative, unless pride and stupidity and the intellect of a house-brick explain it away.
ANYWAY ANYWAY the ex-landlord rang, threatening to take RK to court, to the retort that the ex-tenant had recorded the threatening phone calls and retained the threatening texts and voicemails, and would countersue to press charges.
This is very much an empty threat. RK had done nothing illegal in buying the domain; it was his and he could do what he liked with it. Also, if PABLO was stupid enough to go to court - a process that would involve more like $3,000 than $300 - there would be discovery, where RK would be able to demand access to his business accounts, which PABLO could absolutely not allow to happen. Once again Conrad asks why he didn't just create a new website? Except that's not a satisfying revenge, is it? Art!
A Remote Nuclear Tormentor, as no blog is complete without one.
ANYWAY AGAIN AGAIN of course - obviously! - PABLO rang RK in gradually increasing stages of panic and rage, with RK hanging up on him. After 6 months PABLO rings and begs for the website back as he's not had any custom for said 6 months. RK acidly comments 'You need to create a website to find business'.
WELL WHY DIDN'T HE!
After another alleged 6 months - a year without bothering to create a new website is a timeline I find impossible to believe - PABLO calls back only to find that the cost is now $350 as a 'bottomhole tax' was being added.
After another 6 months PABLO calls to beg for the site back, only to be told the cost is now $380 - see above for reasons.
Eventually PABLO texts RK to inform that the painting business has now gone out of business and he hopes he's happy about that. RK's response it to once again offer the domain name - for $380. Art!
So, we are asked to believe that PABLO sat and twiddled his thumbs for a year and a half, bleeding money all the time and refused to pay RK $380 to avoid bankruptcy? I think that strains credibility to it's breaking point.
That was the last contact PABLO ever had with RK, whom maintained the domain name for another 2 years just to be certain that PABLO had, indeed, gone out of business. When he checked 'major business listing sites' there was no mention of his ex-landlord's business, presumably backing up the 'gone out of business' narrative. Note that at no point in this story are we told what the domain or business name is, since that would allow it's veracity to be checked.
Finally, RK took care to drive by 'the office', presumably where PABLO had worked from, to find it closed with a 'For Rent' sign up. Art!
In Conrad's humble opinion, which, given that this is my blog and my opinion matters more than yours, RK did indeed purchase the domain name and divert a lot of customers away from PABLO, who then got a new website and domain, having suffered a lot more than $320 in losses; but they didn't go out of business.
Thus the moral of the tale is more 'Cannot confirm' rather than 'Trust but verify'.
And with that, we are done!
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