I’m reposting here because I’m at my wits end and maybe somebody who has gone through a similar experience can give me some insight or advice.
So after a month on vacation we came back to our apartment (we live on the first floor, and there are three floors in total) and after a day or two, we suddenly heard a “blop blop blop” sound and, when I looked at the toilet, bubbles where coming up and the water did not completely flush out. After that, whenever we flushed the toilet, the water would go up almost to the limit and then go down. We contacted the building manager and he contacted the company he works for, which is basically in the business of buying and selling buildings (they bought ours when the previous owner couldn’t pay his debts), and after going back and forth they basically told us to buy a plunger and use it because it was probably our fault. They said that having being out for a month had probably caused the problem (which honestly makes no sense because we’ve been out before and never had this problem before).
I used the plunger one day, the toilet went back to acting normal but then the upstairs neighbor flushed the toilet and again “blop blop blop”, and the water went back to rising almost to the top. We contacted them again and they basically told us: “please continue using the plunger until living there becomes difficult” I tried using dishwasher soap and hot water, and same result, it works for a while but then “blop blop blop” and we have the problem again.
The company refuses to call a plumber saying that because only we are having the problem it’s ours to deal with (they don’t seem to understand how piping works in a building) and my wife says the feeling she gets is they are trying to get out of paying for anything because they are not in the rental business but in the buy-sell building business.
I honestly have no problem in paying if we caused the problem, but they simply refuse to do anything beyond telling us it’s our problem, and I’m kind of worried that if we call somebody and they say the point were our pipe and the main pipe connect has a blockage they’ll try to put the blame on us and pay the cost of calling a truck in. I talked to a friend of mine who is an architect and he told me it could be our toilet, but he doubts it and, considering that a few years ago, with a different company, a cistern truck had to come and clean up the pipes because some other neighbors were having toilet problems, he thinks it’s probably the same thing again but this time it’s our turn to go through it.
Has anybody had this kind of toilet problem and could anybody give me any ideas on how to solve it? And also, when the management company refuses to pay for a plumber alleging that it is a problem that only concerns our apartment and it’s our responsibility, even when there’s no real proof that we were responsible for what happened (it’s pretty obvious that it could be any of a million things), do we have any options? We live in Osaka.
update: just got a letter informing us that the building has been sold to another company. it has made me laugh out loud harder than I ever had before in my life. no wonder they didn’t want to pay for it LOL guess we’ll be contacting the new company and letting them know the big surprise (both metaphorically and literally) the seller left them XD
by Glittering-Spite234