Should I take my roomates to court?

College Life
1

<p>In June of 2009 I moved out of my place. My 2 roommates got 2 roommates to replace my friend and I. The cable was under my name. I moved out and the cable was supposed to be put under someone else's name before I left. It just never happend. According to Time Warner Cable me and my roommate have to go to TWC's HQ and do a transfer of liability? The thing is I live 150 miles away now and cannot afford to go back and change the cable.. The last payment I paid to the cable company was the one before I left, so I dont owe any more money. I didnt just cancel the cable right away becuase I didnt want my roomies to have to pay the installation fee again. </p>

<p>It is now August and I have been asking the 2 roommates I know for the money to pay the bill so thier cable isint shut off. As soon as I would have gotten that money I would have shut it off. </p>

<p>I do not know the 2 new roommates they replaced us with, so I cant ask them for the money. </p>

<p>My problem now is that they have been ignoring my calls and text messages. So now I cant get the money they need to give me so I can pay THIER cable bill. I think they have been ignoring me becuase they have recieved the bill and its for 2 months and its probably around $230 now and they dont want to pay it. </p>

<p>Should I take them to court? Should I warn them, then take them to court? Is this going to mess up my credit? Who should I take to court? My former 2 roommates AND their 2 new roomates? HELP!</p>

<p>Is there anything else I can do? I am really upset about this and need help.</p>

2

<p>you cant take them to court because you didn’t cancel a service you were no longer using, as a favor to them. they never formally agreed to that, even if it was supposed to be for their benefit. you should have stopped paying the bills when you were no longer the beneficiary of those services.</p>

<p>you can threaten that though, and see if they change their minds. at this point there is no legal recourse that will get you your money back. i would walk away, lesson learned. dont pay other peoples bills.</p>

3

<p>Ugh I would never put my name on any bill that a bunch of other people are supposed to help pay.</p>

4

<p>I’m pretty sure it won’t affect your credit, though :)</p>

5

<p>Why didn’t you tell them you were moving and shut it off?
Anyways, no, I don’t think you should take them to court because you didn’t pay YOUR bill.
And yes, if you don’t pay it, it will go on your credit report as a collections account.</p>

<p>Just pay it, cancel it, and be done.</p>

6

<p>contact their parents, that’ll probably fix it.</p>

7

<p>Attack, I hope you are being sarcastic.</p>

8

<p>actually, i wasn’t. it’s definitely better than trying to sew them. there’s a chance the parents will pay or get them to pay. if they’re gonna act like little kids then treat em like little kids.</p>

9

<p>Yah, I highly doubt that would work. My parents would never pay for my cable bill, especially if it was my own fault it is past due. Nor could my parents force me to pay any of my bills either. Being a tattle-tail may work when your 6, but it doesn’t work when you sign a cable contract. The OP has no one to blame but him or herself.</p>

10

<p>unless your parents are also the OP’s parents, it doesn’t really matter if your parents wouldn’t take responsibility for your failure to pay your bills.</p>

11

<p>So basically you are just assuming that they will take responsibility, when legally they don’t have to? The OP’s parents CANT get the roomies to pay for THEIR child’s bill.</p>

12

<p>i meant the OP’s roommates’ parents
sometimes people do good things even when the law doesn’t force them to. i never said anything about them being legally forced to.</p>

13

<p>If you haven’t already, you should have Time Warner shut off the cable. That might get the roommates to start paying. I’m surprised Time Warner still has the cable on with unpaid bills like that.</p>

<p>You’ll probably have to just suck up the cost. It was your bill.</p>

<p>Also, why do college students need $115 a month cable?</p>

14

<p>Is the bill already late? Then yeah, it probably has already affected your credit. You should pay it off, so that you don’t risk lowering your credit score. You should then shut down their cable immediately. You don’t have to tell them you paid it off, you can say that you didn’t and the cable company shut off their cable, and continue to demand the money, adding that if they do not pay NOW, you will continue to pester them and demand that they pay the late fees later, too. Of course, they won’t know that there won’t be any late fees, and that way it won’t affect your credit score. They probably just hope that they will just have to keep ignoring you until the deadline, and that you will then pay it off and they’ll get rid of you. Keep calling them and make it clear that you WILL NOT quit, you will not pay the bill yourself (even though you will), and that the interest and late fees will continue to add on and you will make sure that you will not be the one paying for it. You can even write them a letter (hard to ignore) attached with the bill and an angry note. I’m a stubborn person, though, and I wouldn’t let other people getting away with being jerks and receiving free cable on my tab without any offence. At the very least, you will really, really bug them, and they probably won’t want to do something like this again. </p>

<p>And I can see what the other poster meant by getting your parents on board. Honestly, if you think that your parents would do it, and that they are the type of people that would be scared (believe me, there are many who would laugh at screwing a peer over but still shake in their little booties at the thought of facing a “REAL ADULT”) then you should consider it. Especially if your parents know legal mumbo-jumbo, or can act like/sound like they do. If they are stupid, your parents can call and say completely untrue stuff (make them think that they will go to court, pay huge fines, have a record, etc) and that they are backing you 100% in this effort against them and it will scare the **** out of them. Who knows, you might consider it.</p>

<p>Also, learn from this. I never want to put things under my name, I’d rather someone else did it. If I did, I would not trust people (even a lot of close friends) to be responsible enough to pay for something when they know that they could get away with not paying. Otherwise, I would risk a situation like this, the possibility of lowering my credit score, and losing valuable money. You never know, it could have been a lot worse. If they were bigger a-holes, they would have bought a load of PPV movies and done who knows what, making you owe more. It would pretty much suck to have to pay for someone else’s porn or something. Remember: you cannot control the behaviour of others. You can only control YOUR own behaviour, so do yourself a favour and don’t put yourself at risk.</p>

15

<p>When I had roommates sharing common service and utilities contracts, I agreed to put things under my name, but it we signed a contract that I’d cancel them if I moved out regardless of any inconvenience it might have caused. And I was the one who collected money from everyone else and I always made sure I was paying the bill - no excuses for getting late anyway -.</p>

<p>When I was moving, my roommates had good financial history with me :), and one month before I moved they asked for a transfer of contracts.</p>

16

<p>Huh? you have to pay for vable in your dorms? We get cable for free in Madison.</p>

17

<p>I guess we’re talking about off-campus living arrangements. When I lived in Uni. dorm, cable was included.</p>

18

<p>yeah contact their parents, or the college authorities(assuming its college housing) </p>

<p>if that doesnt work, threaten legal action, but make sure that you tell them that youd rather that it didnt get to that stafe</p>

19

<p>You said, “The last payment I paid to the cable company was the one before I left, so I dont owe any more money.” That’s not true. By not terminating your agreement with them – either by putting the cable in someone else’s name or having it disconnected – you continued to owe the payment every month, and any late fees that might have been added when you didn’t pay. Your first priority needs to be contacting Time Warner, finding out how much you owe, either terminating the service or putting it in someone else’s name, and paying your bill. And if you can’t do that from where you are now, you will have to go back to get this taken care of.</p>

<p>Having said that, your ex-roommates may have an obligation to reimburse you for some or all of the money you need to pay Time Warner. But that’s a matter between you and them, not you and Time Warner. And when you say “the cable was supposed to be put under someone else’s name before I left. It just never happend,” it sounds as if you didn’t bother to make a formal agreement, let alone get it in writing. It sounds as if things just happened and you assumed that they were going to do something and only now are you finding out that they didn’t do it, whatever it was. But since you are considering taking it to court, you will want to consider not only whether they agreed to reimburse you for part or all of the bill, but what kind of proof you have of that agreement. Is it your word against theirs? Do you have it in writing? Do you at least have checks from earlier months to show that you were never responsible for paying the whole bill, even when you lived there?</p>

<p>Now, as far as your ex-roommates’ new roommates go, I doubt that you ever made any agreement with them. Why would you? If you had the time and energy to track them down and make a deal with them, you would have had the time and energy to cancel your contract, right? You might be able to convince me, without a clear written contract, that your ex-roommates owe you some reimbursement, but you would need some pretty solid proof to make me believe that although having someone else take over your contract “just never happend,” you had the foresight to get your ex-roommates’ new roommates to agree to pay you for cable.</p>

<p>Good luck with it, however you decide to handle it.</p>