PLEASE HELP

[redirish28]

Okay guys here we go. As you may have seen from earlier post we have been having trouble with our phone line. Verizon came 11:30 fixed the problem. Wife and I had no problems all day. As my wife was about ready to shut down for the night. She gets a call from the alarm company. Saying that we are our landlady's contact number and they can't get a hold of out landlady. They have to report to someone that they are send the police. my wife thinks okay landlady's mom set off the alarm again (poor woman is old and showing signs of Alzheimer's. + English is something she doesn't speak.) So my wife still gets ready for bed thinking police are coming to check on everything and be done with it. (hate to say it but it is common for it to happen.) Suddenly loud pounding on the door. Landlady ask if my wife has a dial tone wife says yes. Landlady says "You've been nothing but trouble for me you have a week you are evicted". Storms back into her house leaving my wife stunned and in a panic attack. (as some of you know my wife has been terrible bouts of panic attacks since starting the job she is at now and things that use to not upset her so much have now sends her into panic attacks quickly.)


She debated about calling the police to make a report. She ended up doing it. Explained the situation. Police man said he couldn't see anything wrong. It is probably a short in the wire because no signs of fowl play. His Lt drives by explains that she and the landlady where at the box earlier and did something to it.

Landlady has no dial tone.

So we are back to stringing the line out the window again just to have internet service.

Advice... Help.... anything....Please.

[The Midway Rebel]

1. Confusing story.

But FWIW, your land lady cannot evict you with a weeks notice.

[Sherman A1]

2. Just a thought here

In the daylight have the phone company check the actual wires. We have trouble with squirrels running up and down the lines. When they do, they may be digging their claws into the insulation on them, causing holes that allows in moisture which disrupts service.

beyond that I have no ideas, but wish you the best of luck.

[Lasher]

3. Squirrels chew on the cables.

You're pretty close but it's their teeth, not their claws, that do the damage.

[EFerrari]

4. PA eviction law site:

For a Landlord to evict you in Pennsylvania:
They must go to court, which usually involves these important steps:

1. Written notice. Unless your lease says otherwise, your landlord must give you a written notice before filing an eviction case against you. The notice tells you when the landlord wants you to move. The amount of time the eviction notice gives you to move depends on the length of your lease and the reason you are being asked to move. If you are being evicted because you did not pay rent, your landlord must give you a written notice at least 10 days before filing an eviction case.

If you are being asked to move for any reason other than nonpayment of rent, your landlord must give you a written notice

*

15 days before filing an eviction case, if your lease is for one year or less; or
*

30 days before filing an eviction case, if your lease is for more than one year.

Your lease can provide for a longer or shorter notice, or no notice at all.

If you have not moved out by the date stated on the eviction notice your landlord gave you, your landlord cannot just throw you out. He or she must still file a landlord/tenant complaint and go to court, as described below.

http://www.rentlaw.com/eviction/paeviction.htm

You might be better off without this landlord but she can't verbally give you notice of one week.

[redirish28]

5. She never got around to get papers for us to sign. We have basically been on

a verbal agreement. We have the rent to her by the 30th of each month.



Unfortunately (stupidity on our part.) since her back injury she has been asking us to give her cash since it is hard for her to get to the bank. She promises she'll e-mail us a receipt. she hasn't always been good with that.

We are just going to give her money orders from now on.

[TorchTheWitch]

6. you may have a problem

NEVER give anyone cash without a receipt at the time the cash was given. Apparently, you have given her cash for rent and not been given a receipt for it, and that can be looked at by the court as your not having always paid your rent - which then gives her a valid reason to evict you.

Not having a written lease isn't a problem as long as you have proof that you paid at least one month's rent or a security deposit. However, that then means that you have a month-to-month lease.

Work with the police and the phone company to determine if the landlord has been messing with the phone box. The phone box is owned by the phone company, and her being seen by the police messing with it is certainly grounds that she is attempting to disrupt your peacefully living in your rental unit. The phone company will want to press charges against anyone going into it and messing with it. I'm curious how she could get into the box in the first place since the phone company is supposed to keep them locked.

You mentioned running a line yourself to the outside unit, and that's a really bad idea since she can also claim that by doing so YOU'RE illegally messing with the phone lines. Whenever there is a phone line problem, DON'T try to fix it yourself by doing anything with the outside lines, and call the phone company to come deal with it instead. Your landlord has a valid point if she believes it's you messing with the phone lines outside if she's seen you running a line.

All that said, your landlord is whacky and probably intended to rip you off by not having a written lease and wanting rent payments in cash. However, it's not going to be easy for you to prove since you apparently have given her cash rent payments without getting a receipt and have apparently been messing with the outside phone lines yourself.

Your best bet is probably to try to work things out with the landlord so she understands that you aren't messing with the phone lines in order to try to steal service or disrupt anyone else's and that you believed that because of her wanting rent in cash without giving you receipts and her (or her mother) messing with the phone lines outside that she was trying to steal from your and run you out. I think it's gone way past that point though, and you may have to resign yourself to her not ever trusting you and wanting you out.

[redirish28]

7. yeah, it was our stupidty about the rent stuff.

Okay. Our phone is secured by a screw. And I am only in the part of the box that the phone company recommends you get into to test the line.


And this whole started when she went to the phone box. Saturday we had phone service until she and the cop messed with the phone box than my wife lost internet and phone. We will be disconnected the line we have strung. But when the tech came out to fix the problem he didn't say anything about the line we had running.

[TorchTheWitch]

8. the cop was in the phone box too???

Oh dear. This is a mess. I think what needs to happen is you, your landlord, the cops and the phone company all need to get on the same page as to what's going on with the phone lines. This is why it's not a good idea to be messing with the outside phone lines unless you work for the phone company. It's REALLY weird that they actually told you to test anything outside and need to do it themselves. Any time I ever had phone problems they had you test your lines inside your own dwelling and anything about the lines outside was hands off especially because those lines aren't just yours but other peoples'. The phone company probably contributed to the problem by having you mess with the outside lines seeing as the landlord probably saw you doing it and came to her own conclusions. It's possible that they told her the same thing which is why you may think that it's her that's messing up your lines.

[EFerrari]

9. The thing is, as a tenant, it's debateable whether you should have access

to that box. Tenants usually have to get written permission to make holes in the wall, let alone, mess with utilities.

Be careful She doesn't sound very stable. :(