Sorry, that’s a bit of a clickbait title. Basically, I lived in a LeoPalace for 7 years. Around year 4 or 5, the building was purchased by an independent owner. When the new owner purchased the building, he or she didn’t change any of the locks from those floppy, plastic card types that LeoPalace uses. Obviously, LeoPalace doesn’t make replacement key cards for units that aren’t its own. So, it’s not possible to make replacement key cards for my former unit anymore.
Because those plastic, floppy key cards were my wallet for 7 years, they were kind of bent. There were three cards in total, two were in rough shape, but one was perfectly acceptable. All three key cards were still functional of course. When I moved out, I handed them to the inspector, and I didn’t hear anything until I got my final bill today.
The new owner of the building is trying to charge me a whopping 40,000 yen because he or she replaced the entire door lock with a normal key system to give to the next tenant. The reasoning is that the key cards were not in acceptable enough condition to hand to the next tenant.
Your thoughts? Landlord’s responsibility or mine?
Any resources you could share?
Btw throw away account.
5 comments
Lock replacement money is common here, but generally it’s paid for by the new tenant when they move in as part of all the upfront fees you pay. Check your contract to make sure you didn’t pay it when you moved it or your landlord might be double dipping and getting it when the person moves in and again when they move out. I believe it’s usually also around ¥20,000, but maybe it’s different for a key card type lock? I’m not entirely sure how key cards differ from a normal key, but generally the whole cylinder is changed to be extra secure just in case the previous tenant made/kept secret extra copies of the keys. Did they give you an actual receipt copy for the cost of the replacement?
Edit: read it again and I guess they might be charging you regardless since they eventually want to convert all the locks to non leopalace type locks. I’d be a bit skeptical of it since I think it should be more on the responsibility of the new tenant rather than you
You would be responsible for the *depreciated* value of the key cards, not the entire lock system. Their inability to produce replacements is their problem, not yours.
Talk to consumer affairs. https://www.kokusen.go.jp/e-hello/map/index.html
I User to live in a fancy as balls mansion. Lost the key. That was 18,000 yen.
It had the automatic lock thingy for the postbox and all tjat stuff.
Sorry for grammatical errors. Really drunk
You didn’t break it. Not responsible.
Those fucking assholes. The *new* tenant pays for a new lock and key. Tell them this.
I bet the dirty bastards charged the new hapless sod too.
Besides, if this is an NFC-based lock, the bent old cards are irrelevant. New blank cards are cheap.