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If the previous tenant leaves personal property and hasn't come back for them, do they belong to me or the landlord?As with all legal questions, the answer depends on where you live.In the US, the property doesn’t belong to either of you.By law, the landlord MUST remove the property (so the new tenant has no access to it) and keep it secure. There are specific notices and timelines the landlord must follow to notify the previous tenant that the items were left and have been secured.After a specific amount of time in storage, the landlord then has the right to dispose of the items in any manner he sees fit.It’s IMPERATIVE that all the necessary notices and steps be taken EXACTLY in accordance with state/local laws. Doing any less opens the landlord up to lawsuits. Crazy as it sounds, there ARE people out there who will leave something inconsequential behind, just hoping the landlord will simply throw it away. Then they sue for damages. And because the landlord didn’t follow the proper steps, he loses in Court. So that $10 briefcase winds up costing him thousands of dollars in legal fees and damages.The landlord CAN, however, (and definitely should) charge the tenant for removal and storage. He can require that THOSE fees be paid before releasing the items to the previous tenant. Failing to pay the fees and collect the items brings us back to the landlord being able to dispose of them.We had a tenant leave behind a ton of junk - literal junk - that he’d been “working on”. Things like a non-working hot tub, car parts, electronics, etc. It cost us about $500 to have the items moved and secured. Since we were having work done on the house, we were able to simply secure them in the garage, so no extra storage costs. We sent the proper notices (all via certified mail, naturally). The tenant, thinking he’d be sneaky, refused to give us a forwarding address (he’d been evicted for non-payment). Fortunately for us, the law only requires us to send to his last known address. He hadn’t put in a forwarding order with the Post Office. At the end of the mandatory storage time (about 45 days, all up), we called the junk people and had the garage emptied. The tenant tried to sue, but we had all our ducks in a row - copies of notices, both by certified mail and email, copies of the bills, etc. We had the proof that he hadn’t had his mail forwarded (the returned certified mail), so he lost.

My air conditioning stopped working, so I took it to a repair shop. What they found was that a mouse had gotten into the wiring harness and chewed through the wires.As it happens, the repair shop was a GEICO-authorized repair center, and I had GEICO car insurance, with full comprehensive coverage that included damage from animals. So the repair shop called GEICO to get approval for the repair, and GEICO authorized it.Since the car was already in the shop, they could fix it immediately if I paid the bill and waited for GECIO to re-imburse me. That made sense, so I agreed. Again, the repair shop called GEICO to make certain this would be OK.After the repair was done, the repair shop saved the damaged wiring, the nest they found in the A/C duct, and remains of the mouse who had gotten himself trapped and tried to chew his way out. They called GEICO one more time to see if they wanted to save this evidence, and GEICO assured them it was not necessary.Then came time for GECIO to re-imburse me. They refused. They said they did not believe a mouse had done any damage. They demanded proof. The repair shop provided a letter describing their conversations with GEICO. Then GEICO said that the air conditioning must have been old and damaged beforehand, and on that basis, would only pay HALF the cost of repair. They cheated me out of $700 on that repair.I should have taken them to court THEN, as I ended up doing a year later when they canceled my policy without telling me. I found out when the MVA fined me $1500 for driving without insurance! They told the MVA, but not me. The law says they must send me two notices by certified mail. They said they did that, but put both notices in the same envelope and a clerk in their mail room certified that he had sent it. I won in court, but never got the $1500 fine back.So pick one… two slimy incidents with GEICO.

Yank, currently living in Germany since 2014. So I really like living and working in Germany, but coming from the States, here are the things that will annoy most Americans:Paying with card? Forget it.Unless it’s a major retailer, chances are you won’t be able to pay with a card. Germany is still very much by and large a cash dominated society.Need to cancel something soon? Nope.Standard notice for canceling anything in Germany is 90 days. Apartment, cable, internet, insurances, etc. If you don’t give the 90 day heads up in writing, don’t be surprised when you get stuck in a renewal.Want register for something “official” like a bank online? Not happening.Though it’s gotten a bit better in times with banking specifically, most official things must be done in person, or if your lucky by certified mail. This gets very frustrating as many times, especially as a foreigner figuring things out, you’ll devote half a day waiting in some government office, only to be told you’re missing some form (which of course isn’t available onine) and to come back again in person, and repeat the process, because of course you can’t do the documentation online.Privacy talks get annoying after a while.This is a matter of perspective, but most German’s are crazy about privacy. If you’ve got German friends, they probably have fake names on Facebook…But yeah, coming from the states where privacy seems to be a thing of the past, it is sometimes annoying hearing everyone complaining about privacy rights and blah blah blah. A German will do everything in their power to protect their privacy, an American just accepts that no matter what is done, if someone wants my info badly enough, they’re going to get it anyways. This makes things extraondinairly hard when you work in the marketing field.