Apartment sending advertisements to me without option to opt out I apologize if this has been answered before, I see similar questions although under slightly different circumstances. I am currently renting an apartment in Texas. My rental company uses SMS to send me updates about various things that require attention — maintenance visits, water interruptions, etc. These are normal and totally acceptable. However, occasionally I receive texts (spam) from them offering various services that look effectively like this: Worried about hail damage? &lt;Apartment Company> has storage with covered parking available. Call &lt;Apartment Company> for more details &lt;phone number>. To me, this is spam. This is unsolicited and unwanted. I have never authorized marketing messages to my personal cell phone. There is no opt-out option within this message, and no option for opting out of marketing messages within their portal. I informed the front office that I do not wish to receive any more of these messages. They claimed that because we have a 'prior relationship' that these message are not spam, and are perfectly legal and they have no obligation to allow me to opt out. Does this legally qualify as spam? If not, why not? And if so, what is my legal recourse? Should I simply file a complaint with the FTC? In all honesty, I tried to first handle this like an adult by simply asking them to please stop spamming me as it seemed like a small misunderstanding. However their response has been aggressively rude, and they are quite belligerent in their response that this is not spam and they have no obligation to let me opt out.
According to this page from the US FTC such spam is illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. (The specific provisions of those laws are discussed on this page from a law office.) The FTC lists as an exception: Transactional or relationship types of messages. If a company has a relationship with you, it can send you things like statements or warranty information. This does not appear to include ads for new and different products or services from a firm that you have a relationship with that does not involve those products or services. The FTC also advises that: If you are an AT&amp;T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint or Bell subscriber, you can report spam texts to your carrier by copying the original message and forwarding it to the number 7726 (SPAM), free of charge. The page also describes how to file a complaint with the FTC. This Wikipedia article confirms this, and also notes that: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released an order in Aug, 2004 that reiterated that SMS spam messages to cellphones are illegal under the existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Each such unsolicited message received without permission entitles the recipient to take the sender to small claims court and collect a minimum of $1 for each violation. ... The 2003 TCPA Order (18 FCC Rcd at 14115, para. 165) says: “Both the statute and our rules prohibit these calls, with limited exceptions, ‘to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged.’ This encompasses both voice calls and text calls to wireless numbers including, for example, short message service (SMS) calls, provided the call is made to a telephone number assigned to such service.” This article also mentions the 7726 complaint number. However, some of the restrictions may only apply if an automated dialing mechanism is used or "an artificial or prerecorded message" is sent. According to the Wikipedia article on the TCPA a consumer: may (1) sue for up to $500 for each violation or recover actual monetary loss, whichever is greater, (2) seek an injunction, or (3) both. (see 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3)(a),(b)) Telling the office that you plan to take them to small claims, which would require them to send someone to represent them in court, and might also be negative publicity for them, might get them to stop sending msgs to you. You could also place a negative review mentioning this spam on any online review service in your area. Or you could tell the office that you will do this if the spam continues. Be careful not to make any false or unprovable statements in any such review. You might want to send a written demand that they stop sending you such unwanted text solicitations, citing the two laws, by certified mail with return receipt.
The fact that the terms and conditions do not mention the word &quot;disable&quot; is significant, but not in the way you seem to think. You state: &quot;...the merchant's T&amp;C which does not explicitly allow the merchant to charge a fee for a disabled account&quot;. However, this doesn't mean that the merchant needs to explicitly state that they may. What it actually means is that the merchant does not recognize the term &quot;disable&quot; in the context of terminating the service contract. (Did they use stop, terminate, delete, eliminate, fall into disuse, log off, etc. or any other similar expressions?) You haven't defined what &quot;disable&quot; means, but perhaps it is more like a &quot;pause&quot; in service for which payment is still required? (Like having the post office hold your mail vs terminating all deliveries.) What you need to do is to read the section of the T&amp;Cs that deals with terminating service and payment, understand what is required, and execute the procedures they describe. Whatever words they use, do that. If you have done all the steps and can prove it then you have a case against them, otherwise you are arguing semantics and interpretation... As to the title question, it does not appear that any &quot;law&quot; has been broken, this is just a contractual misunderstanding. P.S. This is the reason why I always set up payments through my bank to &quot;push&quot; money to vendors rather than authorizing them to &quot;pull&quot; money from me. When I am done I notify them and stop paying. I don't need to ask them to please stop taking it from me.
You would report unpermitted lock replacement to the home owner. The building code regulates new construction and renovations, and is not a requirement of any and all residences. This seems to correspond to a "secondary suite", which is supposed to be registered with the city (if it is allowed in your city). Here is a link for Vancouver, for instance. Such suites are supposed to be registered and inspected, the inspection being carried out by Development, Building and Licencing: By-Law Compliance &amp; Administration (a division of the city government). This article discusses some of the legal problems that can arise from an illegal secondary suite, however the penalties would land on the property owner, and he may not have approved of this subletting or the basement suite. A less-nuclear first step would therefore be reporting it to the property owner.
If you have an agreement with a company that specifies &quot;you agree to give me something of value, in case I give you something of value&quot;, you have a contract. In order for there to be a contract, there has to be actual acceptance of the offer. You can put out on a web page some contract stating those terms, and if you get positive acceptance of the contract (hence the standard click-through technology), then as long as you have done the thing promised, you can bill them for doing the thing promised. It's not clear what thing of value you are offering on the web page, since it's not &quot;doing actual work&quot;. Them sending you an email isn't you doing something. One thing you could do is block all incoming emails, and for money you agree to unblock emails from registered subscribers. Just announcing that you will bill anyone for emailing you does not create a contract, because the emailer need not have even seen your announcement. This is why e-contracts need a click-through button. It's legal to request money, but there is no legal obligation for them to comply. That will be $10, please.
Providing the antenna was installed in accordance with the law it's hard to see what basis they could either void their lease or seek damages. The antenna poses no risk to health (non-ionising RF radiation is harmless) and you have no rights in any view it may be blocking there is no damage. The only thing that I can see is if there was misrepresentation at the time the lease was formed. That is, the developer knew that there was going to be an antenna and specifically said there wouldn't be. This falls flat if a) they never mentioned antennas or b) the decision to install it was made after the lease was formed.
In Texas, if the lease states that the landlord can inter for some purpose, the landlord can enter for that purpose. I assume there is no statement in the lease. Then the landlord has no right to enter except in emergencies and for routine inspections or repair. This right, however, stems from the courts and not statutes, and you could theoretically sue the landlord to prevent such an inspection (you would need a good attorney, to overcome the presumption that reasonable routine inspections with notice are allowed).
Non-residential tenancies are subject to Fla. Stat Ch. 83 Part I. This is statutorily a tenancy at-will unless a contrary agreement is in writing signed by the lessor: the duration of the lease is yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly as determined by the periodicity of rent payments. There are various legal conditions related to rent default and causes for removing tenants, also conditions about premises that are wholly untenantable. Unlike residential leases, there are not any special statutory conditions surrounding the landlords presentation of leases. Florida law contemplates and allows the possibility that there are no written documents, and for non-residential tenancies has very little to say about it (only pertaining to the distinction between at-will vs not at-will leases). Therefore, the matter follows the general rules for contractual disputes: whoever makes the best case for their claims wins. If Bob has a scanned copy, that is excellent proof. If Alice alleges and proves that the scanned copy was modified, that disposes of Bob's evidence. If Alice presents a copy of the contract that says otherwise (I do mean copy), then this anomaly has to be explained. Bob can claim that they tore up Alice's original and renegotiated the deal, but he needs to prove that claim. If Alice presents the original contract, Bob's story becomes much less plausible. There are millions of variants of what might happen: the point is, there is no requirement to present the original signed document to support a claim in a contractual dispute.
No. From here: Organisations must not send marketing texts to individuals without their specific, valid and prior explicit consent. This consent must be recorded and kept as proof of consent. There is a limited exception for previous customers, which is known as the soft opt-in. A soft-opt in only applies if the organisation have obtained the contact details in the course of a sale (or negotiations for a sales) of a product or service to the customer; they are only marketing their own similar products or services; and they gave the customer an opportunity to opt-out of the marketing, both when first collecting the details and in every message thereafter.