[Porsche-O-Phile]

About a month ago, we experienced a blockage of our bathtub. I tried several remedies for this, including spending about $100 worth of Draino, Liquid Plumber, CLR and other junk to try and clear what I suspected was a clog in the drain. Eventually I got sick of screwing around with it (and literally pouring my money down the drain) so I called our property manager and reported the blockage. She said she'd call their plumber out, which she did. The guy came out, cleared a blockage (I guess all he did was snake the pipe - I wasn't here, this is what my wife says) and everything has been draining fine since.

Today I open my mail and the f*cking property company has the audacity to send me a bill for the plumber. Needless to say, I'm pretty pissed off about this. However, before I march over there and tell my P.M. to shove the bill up her fat ass, I figure I'll cool off a bit and ask the wisdom of the board here. It's not so much the amount of the bill (it's fairly small and I can pay it), it's the principle of the matter. Maintenance is supposed to be the landlord's responsibility - not the tenant's. If I had known I was going to be the guy paying the bill, I'd have snaked the goddamn pipe myself - for free.

I want to know firstly if it's even legal to do this. Secondly, I want to know what (if any) recourse a tenant has to select a plumber, electrician, roofer or anything else, or if the landlord can simply hire his/her brother-in-law to do the work and then jack up the invoice for ten times the market rate and force the tenant to pay it.

This smells like bull$hit, and needless to say I'd LOVE to have the law on my side. However, I will wait for confirmation of this before responding to this bill.