So my toilet started backing up and I texted my landlord about it, no response for hours, then my upstairs roommates took a shower which absolutely flooded our downstairs bathroom with septic water coming back up from the toilet, poop, toilet paper, it was even coming out of our shower, there was at least an inch of slushy poop all over the floor.
So I call my landlord, he tells me he’s coming over with tools and if he finds hair in the shower drain he will make us pay for the tool rental.
Bro gets to our house, SITS in the septic water and starts power snaking our shower drain (which wasn’t clogged). So he’s splashing the septic all over our walls, shampoo bottles, self care products etc. he also used every single one of our towels (which we had to throw out cause they were SOAKED IN SEPTIC) to try and cover the mess. We stand and watch as he does this for an hour before we start to complain that we haven’t had any water or toilets in our house for a whole day now and everyone has to clean up and use the bathroom, telling him his remedy isn’t fixing anything. Then he starts actually yelling at us (two college aged women and he’s an older man) that hes “doing his best” and how “he has to pee too” and he “dropped everything to come here” (THATS WHAT WE PAY HIM FOR THATS HIS JOB).
I kept pressuring him to call an emergency plumber but he continued to gaslight us saying it was our fault because of hair in the drain and saying a plumber will cost us a lot of money. So after 3 hours of him finding about three tiny strands of hair and absolutely destroying our bathroom I call an emergency plumber behind his back. As I’m talking to the plumber on the phone he is actively yelling at me telling me to let him talk to the plumber instead.
20 minutes later the plumber shows up and fixed the issue in less than 20 minutes. Our pipes are from the 50’s they are made of paper and tar and are caving in on themselves, the landlord claimed they fixed the pipes before we moved in but plumber said they look like they haven’t been cleaned or fixed in years plumber also said the way they were installed is not code. We know for a fact this is a problem that’s been happening for years and has been quick fixed multiple times because our upstairs neighbours moved in months before us and witnessed this happen already.
After it’s been fixed our landlord tried to guilt us into paying the plumber bill and continues to gaslight us saying it was our hair in the drain that caused it when we HEARD the plumber say it was a very old and ongoing issue with the whole piping system. He goes onto gaslight us about the entire situation and put all the blame on us saying if it happens again we will be paying. So I start to throw it back at him and ask when we will get a camera in the pipes like the plumber suggested, and asking when this will actually be fixed and he started to realize we actually know our rights and aren’t going to put up with his tricks so he threatened us one more time and left. At this point I am just scared because I know it will not get fixed and we will end up getting evicted when the pipes completely break so they can do the Reno.
At this point its 10pm and my roommate and I have an extreme biohazard in our house to clean up (extreme endangerment to us and illegal as well). So after dealing with this for HOURS We are literally screaming and crying mopping and wiping up septic fluid and literal shit from our floors, walls, Shower, and Doorknobs all over our house.
I am genuinely traumatized from this, I didn’t eat all day yesterday because I couldn’t get the smell out of my nose, I was scared to shower because of how dirty it had been and I feel absolutely disgusting and tainted.
I am gathering all the receipts and photos and evidence and I am going to sue this mf before the lease ends.
TLDR; my landlord refused to call plumber for emergency septic situation, fully yelled at us, tried to gaslight us into paying the bill and forced us to clean an entire bathroom soaked and splattered with old septic fluid and poop leaving us traumatized.