The Cottages of Anderson

My wife and I recently got married and moved into the Cottages of Anderson as seniors in college. We always paid rent in FULL and ON TIME every month and thankfully I kept a thorough record of this. On March 11, 2024, I found out that I had been accepted to graduate school and we had to break our 12 month lease 3 months early. The property manager assured us that we had provided sufficient notice to move out and said that we would only have to pay 1 months rent for early termination. On March 29, 2024, a $999.00 termination fee was added to our account and on April 1, 2024, the $999.00 rent fee was charged to our account and I paid both IN FULL on April 1st. On May 1, 2024, I paid the prorated rent and believed our time at the Cottages to be paid in full. On May 6, 2024, THE DAY WE MOVED OUT, we received a message from the Cottages stating that we owed $899.00 for insufficient notice and that we would be sent to collections after 30 days if the fee was not paid. I had reached out to the property manager several times before hearing back from her almost a month later on May 30, 2024. On May 30, 2024, she claimed that “The fee was not for improper notice but for early termination of your lease.” I then sent her screenshot confirmation of us paying the termination fee and claimed they made an error and needed to drop the charges and pay us our $100 security deposit back. By June 1, 2024, a month after we moved out, we were locked out of our resident portal and I was no longer able to access the payment option, so I believed the issue to be resolved fully, even though I never received correspondence back from the property manager. On August 23, 2024, over 3 months after moving out, I received a letter in the mail from a collections agent saying that this was the FINAL warning that we would receive from them before further action. We had never received any warning from the Cottages or from a collections agent prior to this day! I immediately reached out to the Cottages with a document of all of our payment receipts and also called the collections agent and sent them the same document showing that we had paid everything in full and that the Cottages OWED US $100! After calling the collections agent SEVERAL TIMES a week for SEVERAL MONTHS without resolution or word from the Cottages, we finally received notice on October 16, 2024, more than 5 months after moving out, that our debt was removed as the Cottages WERE IN ERROR! Do not live here!!!