My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: California
I'm currently fighting with an apartment management office that has consistently screwed me over the whole time I'd lived there, finally escaped after 2 years in a lease, fulfilled all obligations of the lease, and was sent a bill instead of a refund check...
It was only when I watched the computer screen as the office employee was going over my account, that found out that it was "last month's rent" that I paid instead of a "deposit". I was pretty sure I was going to receive a refund of some kind since I overpaid, but it wasn't until I saw the two checks posted to my account at move-in, followed by the constant negative balance (owed to me) throughout several months, that I knew it for certain. Funny thing is, on the screen, there were a slew of account discrepancies posted then retracted, and during that period, my account balance flipped back around to 0 on its own! The employee blindly fiddled on past that, not even noticing it until I pointed it out.
I asked that she print out a copy of it for me as I believe I'm entitled to see my own account history - and she ignored me... then I asked again, and got ignored again... I asked a third time, and she finally, silently, mashed the print button. However, she didn't hand it to me, it just laid on the printer. She says she needs to have someone else take a look at it, and goes in a back room with the printout. The financial manager comes out and tells me she'll need to re-open and review my account. I ask if I could get a printout and she gives me the same "need to re-open" thing, to which I point out the printout that was just made... again, same story. "Come back tomorrow" - it was closing time, after all. I politely leave and then realize... OH GOD. Without a hard copy of what they messed-up on, they're probably going to pull some shady crap with editing the ledger or something dirt-low illegal after seeing where they went wrong...
I went back the next day mid-day with plenty of time for them to review where they went wrong. Again, the same "Hi, how can I get away with providing the least amount of service to get you away from my desk?" employee at the desk, and she automatically knew who and why - she said it'd just be a minute. She came back out and said they needed more time to look over it, but that I wasn't likely to be getting a refund.
Again, she flat-out refused to print a copy of the ledger for me after being asked directly to print a copy. "No, I won't print a copy."
What kind of company can operate in refusal to print a customer's account activity? Is that legal? That's my question of the day. Secondary question I'd like to know is, obviously it wasn't a "deposit". But charges on a no-deposit account are applied to the "account", as the same is done with excess payments, right? Say, I overpaid by $25, it'll sit on my account until I move-out, then I get a refund? Because in my case, I overpaid by a full month's rent, and accounting errors caused that balance to be nullified out of existence. If the accounting errors are corrected, I should get a refund (after they "pay" their charges, like for carpet damage on a carpet that was past its legal replacement age anyway), right?

