ummmm....good for ya, ct. Not sure I understood it all, though. Happier Holidays, mate. 

good for you Congrats

Stick it to 'im, mate! Eggs and bangers!

I had a landlord who was notorious for keeping rental bonds... not that I knew it when I signed the lease.  Even when my neighbour left his rental in pristine condition (actually cleaner/better than when he moved in) the landlord still kept the bond money, saying that 'this and that' was wrong with the place..

Being forewarned is being forearmed... I stopped paying rent a month ahead of vacating to ensure I didn't get ripped off and got MY money back.  The landlord didn't like it, but there was eff all he could do about it legally under our tenancy laws.

Worse still, this landlord is a very wealthy (multi-millionaire) banker, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, had everything handed to him on a platter and got even richer by ripping off tenants who can least afford it to the tune of $800 to a grand at a time.  I hate people like that, and if I could have afforded it, I would have kept my rent up to date just so I could have had the pleasure of busteing him in the jaw for ripping me off as well.

Starkers....I didn't realize that you could speak non-pirate...lol.  

yeah that seems to be the advice everyone gives - withold your last rent payment and lose your deposit - sad that landlords have made it come to that.   We left the flat in really good condition but he wanted it all to redecorate the whole flat!

That's what he told you he wanted to do, but it's my understanding that landlords rarely redecorate/effect repairs and more often than not  just pocket the money.

When landlords are nasty pieces of work they soon find out that I'm a nastier pice of work... if/when they piss me off.  I had one a few years back who wouldn't fix our broken hot water service and then tried to blame the house being uphill from the reservoir for low water pressure... the actual problem was a break in the pipe from the water main to the house, and water was just running into the gutter and down the drain, He was not prepared to spend the money to fix it, so I went to the local council and put him in for a number of building violations, as well as the water waste... then I went to the state gov't rental watchdog and informed them of a number of tenancy act breaches... and for good measure I notified the Tax office of his (undeclared) landlord earnings on 17 rental properties.  Needless to say, he's no longer a landlord... and the tax office siezed the properties to recover unpaid taxes over 23 years.

That'll teach the bastard to mess with me.  Apart fron not effecting essential repairs/maintenance to make the dwelling humanly habitable and comfortable, I discovered that he had entered the dwelling without permission while we were not there and had taken some personal papers and airline tickets... for that he got some jail time, for using my personal papers as identification when trying to use/cash in my airline tickets for another destination.

Hehe, what's that movie, 'Don't mess with The Zohan'... more like don't eff with the starkers... the starkers effs back.

Haha nice one!!!  Thas one asshole landlord you had there.   My new one keeps making excuses to pop up... like collecting mail etc - im sure he wants a sneak peak when we arent there to make sure we are keeping the flat nice...

I LOVE it, starkers! I LOVE it! Stuck it to him right and proper. Pride for my friend 

On a recent current affair program here in Oz, they did a story on a landlord from hell... one of his pet tricks was letting himself in while female tenants were in the shower, to come out stark naked and find him sitting on their bed waiting for them.  His excuse was often alomng the lines of delivering mail, checking to see if any maintenance needed doing, etc, etc.  Slimy piece of shit... would have gotten his nose flattened against one or both of his earlobes if he'd done anything like that to my missus... she has zero tolerance and a nasty temper for people like that.  Luckily for me, she reckons that I'm lovable when I'm full of sass like that.

Yep, I'll stick it good and proper to anyone who deserves it.  Like the time I was helping out a mate who worked in the stables at a local racecourse.  Part of his job description was to muck ut the stables and take the horse shit (for want of a better word) to a treatment plant to be disposed of properly: howver, because there were people in the area who liked to put the manure on the gardens, he would sometimes drive around and give it to them.  On the day that I was there lending him a hand, his boss discovered what he was doing and threatened to fire him if he gave the 'manure' away to anyone.  I mean, like what harm was he doing?  It wasn't like the stable owners actually wanted the stuff, and he certainly wasn't making a profit from anything of value that the stable owners wanted... so I hatched this plan to fill the stable manager's Mercedes convertible with it instead.

I don't like well-to-do people who believe they are better than us ordinary folk... it's like their shit don't stink and we're not good enough, so it serves the bastard right for threatening to fire my mate for wanting to help out a few people.  Well it was worth it if he was going to get fired anyway... so half the truckload went into the Merc, and the other half went to the people who could make use of it.

As I said:

Good on ya mate!  <=== That should read "Brother!"