This is my first post, sorry for mobile formatting! 

I live with my GF, her sister, and one other person in a reasonably nice apartment. For whatever reason, none of them are very responsible and particularly not responsible with bills and utilities. This is only the second time that I’ve ever lived in a place that had utilities separate from the bill and the first place was with my GF and her sister, so I am no more knowledgeable than they are, plus I’m a foreigner and they’re all from the UK, where we live. 

I’ve set up all the utilities and regularly do gas/electric readings, pay the internet and water bills and come to them with the totals at the end of the month. I’m not fond of the way the gas/electric company creates bills because they’ll debit you an estimated amount each month and then either return the difference or charge you more when they do come and do a reading. 

My GF, her sister, and I are all very conscientious about energy usage and make sure to keep all the lights and heating off. The other roommate is a mess, when it comes to everything really (leaves lights on, spills food everywhere, slams doors). Either way, we’ve managed to keep our bill way below the estimate so that each person would probably be getting back £40. 

Now the reasons I don’t want to give the refund back are first, because I work from home and the others often treat me as a house boy or servant. We are required in our contract to perform regular duties on and around the apartment, like sweeping up leaves, cleaning specific parts of the flat, and maintaining appliances. They are daily chores and no one else keeps up with their duties which forces me to take over (our landlord lives above us and can tell when certain things aren’t completed). I also regularly clean the flat because the fourth roommate is frankly disgusting and I don’t want to have to live in her food waste or have bugs/rodents (it’s a basement). I’ve complained multiple times but nothing has come of it. There are other things, like basically being a doorman and always dealing with the landlords even though on the tenancy agreement I’m only a guest because I’m a student. I normally wouldn’t mind doing these things but at least one of the other roommates is always in the apartment and it’s usually that fourth roommate who will hide in her room anytime the landlord comes around and will ignore the door bell (I’ve had to sprint out of the shower or jump off the toilet multiple times to get her packages only to hear her scurry out after I’ve received them and left them in the living room). 

The final kicker is shopping. I regularly shop because the nice store is near my gym. I always like to keep up on buying things like toiletries and condiments because I don’t want to be sitting on the toilet without any mayo (just kidding, I don’t want to wait until there’s no toilet paper to buy more when I need it now). In our last place with my GF and her sister I was down around £300 split between the two of them for regular things like ketchup, salt and pepper, toilet paper, garbage bags, laundry detergent and things like that. I’d try to wait until we’d run out of things to force them to buy it but it didn’t make a difference. It would just mean I didn’t have anything to wipe with. 

The same thing started happening in this apartment where everyone was using the supplies I’d buy. I finally got tired of it and have kept all my things separate from everyone else, still my GF has seen our other roommate steal my ketchup and mayo amongst other things. I’ve probably only lost about half of what the refund actually is while in this apartment. 

So would I be the asshole if I kept the refund to make up for all the work I do and the supplies people have taken without asking or paying for? 

TL;DR

WIBTA for keeping utility bill refund as compensation for the work I do around the flat/the food/supplies people have used without paying me. 


