Uh-Oh!

So...
We need some prayer. We may have to move out of our apartment and start the whole apt search again. Our landlord is acting tricksy. Here's the situation.

Last week we received our first electricity bill. In was $1100 nzd due by the 15th!!!! About ten times more than it should be! This was incredibly wrong and we found out that the water heater was leaking onto the roof. It's as if we had hot water running constantly for 1 month. The landlord then tells us it's our responsibility to pay and makes up some things that aren't in our tenacy agreement (yes, we savde a copy for our records and such times as this).
After seeking advice from different people, the electric company, and the Department of housing and building who deal with housing law, we know the landlord should pay most of the money to the power company, and we, after monitoring the meters for 7 days, would pay the amount that we should have payed normally if it weren't for the faulty equiptment. Normal monthly payments would probably be aroung $100. We have to call the landlord back today, and if he still refuses to pay then we have to take it to the Dept. of housing (which is what you do instead of taking them to court) who acts like a mediator between the landlord and the tenant in resolving issues. Of course if we take it that far, we can't stay here, because relations will be shaky after that.

Tiana and I don't want to move because we're settled a bit, have everything hooked up here with phone and internet, but we also feel like this landlord is taking advantage of us because we're not from here, and also female. They think we don't know how things go here. And there have been a few other things that have been pretty bad here (including the apartment not being cleaned up before we moved in) and things like this that violate what the landlord was supposed to do.

So anyway, we could use the prayers. And thank you, mom, for raising us so that we know how to get the facts and handle serious situations, and do research so that we aren't so easily fooled. We truly are having an abundance of "experiences" here, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's all apart of life, I suppose.