Other people's garbage WTF?!

Is it common practice in Taiwan to, when you move out of an apartment or house, leave years of your accumulated garbage for the new tenant to deal with?

I just moved into a new house, and the dude just basically took anything that was any goood and left me the rest of his garbage. He’s in the “import of cheap garbage” business, and the top floor was his office space, and he basically left me a load of shit to deal with, very little of it of any use. Is this common?

On another note, I have a friend who has a lot of stuff he’s giving away free to anyone who wants it.

-A collection of 20 baseball hats (some with slogans others w/out)

  • 1 cracked porcelyn greco-roman pillar (a little crazy glue and… voila!)
  • 1 grandfather clock (broken)
    -2 boxes (each box containing 50) of plastic holders for taiwan-style toilet paper packs.
  • Various novelty sunglasses
  • Several boxes of Chinese-style plastc decorations
  • large collection of key chains and collectable pins (very popular in Japan)
    -A collection of approx 300 catalogues from various distributors of knick-knacks throughout the middle east (I’m told they are very useful)
    2 filing cabinets full of important business documents (these will go fast)
  • 1 hastily-constructed children’s Snoopy house – approx 5x4x7 feet (can come with or without 500 carpeting samples presently housed within – am assured they will make good doormats – 500 of them!)
  • 1 box of those silver reflector protectors for the dashboard of your car.
  • 1 perfect condition baby crib
  • 1 room full of toys (all varieties and for the ages 3 up to 14)
  • colorful jigsaw connectable spongy floor (some pieces snoopy, some bo po mo fo)
  • various 80’s style women’s belts
  • 1 bathroom stocked with grade-A garbage (valuable recycling material)
  • 1 fat-busting belt machine (slims waist while you do nothing)

I’m sure there’s lots more if anyone cares to come by and rummage. This stuff is going to go fast, so act fast.

You’re not going to get a visit from Antique’s Road Show–that’s for farking sure. :wink:

Yes, Akosh, I believe it is common practice in Taiwan when moving out of an apartment or house to leave years of accumulated garbage and grime for the new tenant to deal with. At least that’s been my experience. In the states, we clean a place before moving out in order to recover the cleaning deposit. Here it seems to be your problem to deal with when moving in. Similar to how in the states one puts away weights in the gym after using them. Here they don’t, and it’s the next person’s problem. Some might generalize more broadly that it’s typical of society here, not giving a shit about other people but just doing as one pleases, but I of course wouldn’t suggest such a thing. :wink:

That’s why I asked. It was suggested to me that this was common practice and I thought; “surely no?!” At this point, I still have my old apartment which is in an intermediate stage of cleaning and I’m sorely tempted to take up this seemingly “local” practice if it will better help me assimilate into the culture. Though, I’ve already done that with regards to stealing motorcycle helmets (only when someone steals mine first) and I’m afraid of the slippery slope that lies ahead were I to adopt this practice. One option I’ve thought of is to hand out loot-bags at my house-warming party – dashboard protectors, barbie dolls, baseball hats and doormats for everyone! The other is to dump all the garbage on buddy’s new doorstep, which would surely escalate the situation, and hardly saves me from any of the work that lies ahead.

Have you paid the landlord a deposit yet? If not, I suggest you tell him that the cost of renting a truck to take the stuff away – its hardly “a few odds and ends” by the sound of things – will come out of his first month’s rent.
It sounds like bullshit to me. Last time we moved, my wife made me practically lick the damn floor clean before we handed over the keys, and she’s as Taiwanese as they come.

yea… already gave the deposit. And it is by no means a few odds and ends. It’s eight years of a family of 5’s garbage. I was anxious to secure the place and buddy ex-tenant claimed there was only going to be some recycling left behind. I’m going to still try the, “I’m taking it out of my rent or you deal with it” option with the landlord. But it’s lame that it has to come to that because of some lazy bastard. I don’t really want to get into an argument with the landlord a day after I moved in, but I see no other option than personally becoming the 501st doormat.

Nah you’ve made a boo-bbo there. The flat I am moving into on Saturday has been cleaned top to bottom by the landlord. I rejected another place just for the simple reason that the landlord wouldn’t clean it. I guess you now have an idea of the landlord’s attitude. But when you move out, he’ll expect the place to be spotless.

The place I moved into a few months ago had been lived in by the owner’s adult son, who was a slob. After a couple of days of rigorous cleaning, we finally hired a cleaning company to finish the job because it was still so bad. The best tool they used was a professional circular floor cleaning machine, because it was obvious the floor hadn’t been cleaned in years. Additionally the dryer was broken because the lint trap had never been emptied, and instead of hooking up a vent hose the bonehead had shoved the vent hole flush up against the wall. This guy neglected everything, and we regularly receive his delinquent bills from creditors. Anyway, my gf demanded after the fact that the landlady pay for the cleaners we hired. While the landlady made the absurd claim that the place didn’t need cleaning because she had already paid NT $15,000 for cleaners, she gave in and agreed to split the cost. So, I agree with sandman: demand that the landlord take care of it.

We have left every apt cleaner than when we first moved in. Managed to get the landlord to paint the current apt before move in but all the apartments we’d seen before in the $35~40,000 range were roach infested and/or old and/or dirty.

Funny thing, we complained to the agent and a relative that all the apartments she’d shown us had roaches running around like they owned the place. They both said, “This is Taipei! Everyone has roaches!”

Fred Smith will take the fat-busting belt machine (slims waist while you do nothing)

Hey, you’re lucky you can get rid of the stuff. I rented my place “furnished” a few years ago when I was still young and poor and this was a good idea. So unfortunately my junk is called “furniture”, and when I asked the landlord if I could get rid of some of it he got all excited and said it’s all part of matching sets that’s in their house yada yada yada.

I heard there’s some government service you can phone to come pick up your stuff with a truck. Does this service exist, and do they charge much? My neighbours said it’s very cheap, but no, they have no idea how to contact this wonderwagon.

I know about the “furnished” fiasco. This ex-tenant was trying to tell the landlord to buy up his furniture, probably telling him that we needed it. I managed to avoid that by insisting to speak to the landlord personally and telling him we already had, or could easily aquire our own garbage furniture and didn’t need hime to purchase garbage for us. Though, if he did buy it, I’m sure we would be expected to keep it.

I’m not really in Taipei city anymore, but I’ll be looking into garbage disposal methods and I’ll post any info that may offer a solution to someone in similar circumstances. Or, if anyone already has a number for cheap hire muscle and subsequent disposal, please share. I know a friend who had a rooftop of junk cleared away and it costed her about 8,000NT . A bit expensive it seemed, but what are you gonna to do?

Why don’t you just bring up the argument that the place should be properly cleaned in order to prevent the transmission of SARS? Maintain that you’ll do your best while you’re living there, but the landlord needs to do his part before you move in…

The Big Babou

Twonavels, yes, there’s a government service that comes and picks up your big bits of rubbish for free (i think). I had a couple of cupboards that needed dumping recently and had to arrange a time, i sorted out an evening a few days in advance, and get the stuff down to the curbside. They were very good and appeared on time. If you want to have larger bits of rubbish taken away for free the number to call is 23964278. This is for Chung Cheng area only but i’m sure that they’ll be able to give you the numbers for all areas.

This is a good suggestion from Sandman. It should work, as I would say it is the landlord’s responsibility to clean the place up. If the last tenant didn’t do it, then she takes it out of the deposit and uses the money to pay for a truck to haul it away. You shouldn’t have to do it. Curious to know how it goes. Perhaps, you should have brought it up with the landlord already no? Maybe they have a friend that can remove it for less money that you might be deducting from the rent.