My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: California.

My landlord has an ACH rent auto-pay system where I had registered my bank account when I moved in. This was part of the welcome package, which touted that I could set up auto-payments for rent through this system. I did not want to be late on my rent and that is why I set this up as soon as I moved in.

This worked fine for 6 months. Then, this month, all of a sudden, I get slapped with a rent late, 3-day notice to pay or vacate along with $100 late fee. I walk up to the leasing office and talk to the manager, he acts like he's seen all this before and has no intention of hearing me out. I ask to speak with his superiors and he gives me the number. I talk to them, they seem more interested in listening but still aren't inclined to waive the late fees despite their system being at fault. They still have no clue why it failed this month. So I pay up, including the late fee, because I didn't want to fight with the eviction notice. I still raise the issue with his superiors and they take my complaint, saying it will take them a week to respond.

I try logging in to the website to check myself and sure enough, it recognizes my account but wouldn't open up my account details, instead showing that something went wrong. I raised this issue, they looked into it and I get access to my account today. Lo-and-behold, when I log in, I see no payment history for the past 6 months and my auto-pay has also vanished, as if my account had been reset and wiped clean. Something smells fishy...

Now, the late payment was not my fault, it was clearly because their system failed. And it is evident from my inability to log in to my account on their site and their subsequent resetting of my account to allow me access. The manager claims that even if it was their IT failure, the late fees would still apply because they weren't responsible for their auto-pay setup failing on me. I'm pissed...

What are my options here? Do I walk up to the manager and say that unless he returns my (illegal) late fees, I would sue them? Or do I simply subtract $100 off my next month's rent and pay the rest? Am I on the right side here, claiming that the late fees were not legal? Natural law and common sense seems to indicate so. I even have a feeling they did this on purpose (intentionally sabotaged my account) so they could slap the late fees on me.

Please help!