Possible fraud re. cable service/ PA

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jsanders

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We live in eastern PA, in an apartment housed within our landlady's horse barn. She has 3 other rental units on this property. She lives on the property as well. Before we moved in, she had told us that she provides cable service, as she had a special deal with the cable company to provide service for her 4 rental units. We found 3 TV cables within our apartment. One has the cable end that screws onto the TV, but the other two don't have the ends. She said numerous times that she would get them for us, but a month later, we still don't have them.

I was told by our landlady, upon the first rent payment, that we forgot to include the payment for cable TV service. She nicely said it was $50.00 a month, but that we could include it with next month's rent payment. She reminded me that she didn't pay for any utilities, that I should double-check my lease. We did that, and it shows that she has checked the box for cable as a landlord responsibility. Perhaps that was a mistake on her part. (She made a similar mistake in checking telephone, and I initialed that correction on her copy of our lease. Then I initialed it on my copy.) There is nothing in our lease that says we are responsible for paying her $50/month for cable TV service, or any other service; it only mentions our monthly rental fee amount, nothing extra.

Due to our confusion, I called the cable company, and found out that they provide her with a value package which includes service for 4 TV's, full Basic service of 90 channels, 2 converter boxes, and two premium channels which are HBO and Cinemax. The price of this package is $86.95, billed to our landlady.

While I was still on the phone with the cable company, I told them that in our apartment, we can receive some basic channels, but not all 90; we have no converter boxes; no premium channels; and no bill. Yet our landlady wants us to pay her $50/month for cable. The woman told me that it was a matter to take up with my landlady.

We are having a problem with this because we were under the impression that we wouldn't be paying anything for cable. I don't know if she charges the other 3 tenants, but knowing her for a month now, I'm sure she does. If she charges all the tenants $50/mo, then she'd be getting $200/mo for a cable package that costs her $86.95, which means she gets a profit of $113.05. We see that as being fraud.

Could this possibly mean that we could be charged by the cable company as receiving stolen property? Do we have any recourse in this matter? Could this be a breach of lease on her part?

I would like to talk to her about this, but am afraid of ruffling her feathers. I have heard from a previous boarder that she can be vindictive. I'm not sure how to proceed with this issue. I would like to try to get this resolved before we need to pay rent for October. Thank you in advance.
 
I have found an agency that provides housing counseling and received some advice over the phone. I was told that what our landlady is doing regarding the cable TV service is illegal. The counselor told me that we should make a copy of our lease, highlight the area where she checked that she is responsible for the cable, compose a polite letter and present them to her. Also, that according to the current wording in our lease, we shouldn't have to pay any money for our cable service for the year that our current lease covers, especially since it was never stipulated in the lease that there is to be any payment from us for such service. If she disagrees, we could take her to court and most likely win the case. The one thing the counselor wasn't sure about was whether or not the cable company could charge us with receiving stolen property (the cable service to our TVs).

If any of the legal experts has an opinion on any of this, I'd love to hear it. Thanks.
 
If they press charges, your defense in this case will be that you didn't know the service being provided to you by your landlord was not considered legal until you called the cable company to check on the choice of services but once you found out about the set up, you took all the steps necessary to ensure that you were in compliance with the local cable law regulations. Hope this helps.
 
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