I've received an erroneous last bill ("décompte chaufferie") for the apartment that I quit 1 year ago, and I'd like to hear some opinions about what you think should be the best course of action.
Here's the situation: I quit the apartment on the 28.02.2021. It might be worth mentioning that I asked to end the contract before the term, with the condition of finding a new tenant (which wasn't a problem, because there was a big demand for that kind of apartment). The whole process wasn't a positive experience, because, despite the fact that I provided a handful of "dossiers" for viable tenants to the agency, they didn't accept a new tenant until around the 20th of February. (Their excuse: overloaded due to Covid). Without them accepting the termination, I was supposed to pay 2 rents starting from 1st of March.
I should add that soon after I notified them about ending the contract, they sent me a ~160CHF bill for " frais de résiliation anticipée" / taxes for early contract termination. This kind of bill is illegal, and I contested it. I didn't hear back about it, so I assume they dropped it. (I can only speculate that they delayed the whole accepting-a-new-tenant process because I didn't want to pay this bill...)
All in all, everything ended well, but I will say it again, it wasn't a positive experience, and my aftertaste was that I wouldn't recommend that agency to someone else.
Fast-forward 12 months. February 2022, I received the last bill for the "décompte chaufferie" / settling the accounts for the heating. I am to receive 12CHF in return because the monthly "charges" / deposits towards expenses exceeded the actual expenses. Positively surprised, I was about to archive the paper in my folder when I decided to compare it with the "décompte chaufferie" received in 2021. This is when I noticed that in the last bill, for the period 01.07.2020 - 28.02.2021, they calculated a deposit of 7 months, although for the given period, there are 8 months! (I triple-checked!!).
On the bill it's only mentioned the period (01.07.2020 - 28.02.2021) and the total "accompte" / deposit, plus a bunch of other breakdowns for expenses, so it's easy to get lost.
The monthly deposit (stipulated in the contract) was 70CHF, so they owe me 70 + 12 = 82 CHF.
I would normally give them the benefit of doubt, call them to notify them about their mistake, and forget about it. But given the precedents I had with them, there are too many shady practices to ignore.
What I would really like is to make sure that there aren't thousands of people getting ripped off by this agency. I assume that a lot of people are glad to see that they are getting back some money, and wouldn't bother to check in-depth.
My question to you is: can I notify some sort of authority that could enforce an audit on the accounts of this real estate management agency?
Or I shouldn't bother?
Thank you for taking the time!