Landlord and Tenant #1: My tenant doesn't pay utility bills!

I've rented a firstfloor office in Taman Molek to a tenant, after a almost a year, the landlord came back to me and inform me that the tenant has owed electricity bills over RM2000, which has way exceeded the utility deposit paid to the owner. Tenaga Nasional Berhad has also sent out warning letter few times indicating that they are going to disconnect the electricity supply.

Later i found out, the tenant didn't really owe anything. What happened here was that, the TNB meter is inside the building, not visible to the TNB people whenever they came to inspect the meter reading, and the tenant is hardly around. As a result, TNB put in an estimated figures every month, which comes to about RM500 usage per month.

I've gone to the tenant's office, and took down the actualy meter reading, then verify the figures with TNB. TNB officers immediately re-adjusted the bills according to the actual readings.

Few tips for those of you having the same scenario, i.e. where your TNB meter is not visible to the TNB people, just write down the current meter reading for say every 2 weeks on a piece of paper plus the date, and paste it on the front door. It's simple, isn't it?

One word of advice for all landlords, please always collect the paid utility bills from your tenant at least every two months, and keep track on your tenant's payment to avoid any unnecessary arguments later.

For your information, one of my client's tenant owed over RM80,000 of water bills over a period of 6 months!