Hello.
My flatmate and I came to Taiwan in November last year to take mandarin classes. We found an appartment through an accomodation rental group on facebook, visited it, signed the contract and sent the deposit (64k ntd). Since we’re foreigners, everything from the visit down to the contract and all technical issues such as the washing machine leaking were managed by an agent, I’ll call her Sarah.We left our appartment in June this year and have been texting Sarah every single day for our deposit. She sent us half of it during the summer and claimed that she was waiting for new tenants to move in to send us the rest of the money. Except that it’s mid October and no news from her except for the occasional “I had issues with the bank, I’ll send the money tomorrow” text every 2 weeks.
I am back home but my flatmate is still in Taiwan and just went to the police today, they brushed her off and said that she directly had to take this case to court. Is there a more efficient way to get Sarah to give us our money back or do we indeed have to see a lawyer to finally settle this?
Go visit the people at https://www.tmm.org.tw/ , they may have their lawyer contact her for free. Are you sure she was an agent and not the landlord? Little bit odd that she would be returning your deposit.
We actually never met the landlord which, I agree, is a bit fishy. However Sarah’s name and infos are the ones used for the contractor on the contract but she always claimed that the landlord was someone else. Thank you for the link!
How come the police came to our apartment one day because our agent refused to pay a technician she hired to come fix our washing machine then? And this was only for around 2000NTD
Because refusal to pay for services rendered is actually considered theft of services, which makes it a criminal case.
In your case, you would need to make a convincing report to the police of a theft by your agent. And then again, you’re just a foreigner, so the Taiwanese police aren’t going to go out of their way to assist you.
Were you absent the day they taught Taiwan “law” in law school?
Even if the police want to try and avoid doing their job, you can certainly make an incident report with them. Despite what they may say, it is actually their job to do so.
I suggest doing so, if you are sure you are all in the clear and have evidence. Not for proof in court, but for a simple official date stamp of the instance. Which would be helpful if you plan to go to court in the future.
Police will do just about anything to brush your case off as a civil dispute. I used to rent a room from a guy and one time when we had a disagreement he stood outside my door sharpening a knife. Police came and said sorry can’t do anything about it, civil dispute
