Not all utilities are set up for that. I know they're not where I live; when tenants leave I need to know the date they're canceling service so I can put service in my name. If they cancel before I can do that, I have to pay a fee to get the service back.
And I would totally charge that to the tenant. If they wanted to argue with me about whether that was in the lease (which of course it should be--that's a good idea), I would ask, "Why should *I* pay for *your* decision to cut power, without telling me, before you vacated the premises?!"
A lame zinger does not a legal requirement make. You could just as easily flip the question: "why should *I* pay for *your* decision to turn the power back on, when it wasn't on when I got the place?"
Is there any legal requirement to even GET a contract with the power company in the first place? The power was off when I got the place. What if i never turned it on? In your mind would I still be "morally" obligated to pay for you to turn it back on?
I returned the unit the same way I got it. I had to do *my* initial inspection without power. If it's not in the lease, and it's not a law, then what justification could you possibly have?
Also, MoneyMonk, this is most likely a piddling amount of money (fee for turning service back on + a few days of power). Assuming that's the case, couldn't you have made or saved more money by doing something productive instead of spending however much time posting here, reading your lease and trying to figure out some rationale for making the landlord pay for your decision?
Why don't you send me a link to the magical internet money machine that automatically would convert the 27 combined minutes I spent on here and reading the lease into money.
Still lets assume that its only 50 bucks. Even spending 8 entire hours working to get that money back would be pretty decent hourly wage compared to what you are earning for YOUR time in this thread.
And again, to say I am making HIM pay for MY decision is logically incoherent. My only decisions were to turn on the power, and then later turn it off. I paid for both of those. Nothing he chooses to do with the place after the timeframe of my lease can be described as MY decision. Especially when I got the place with the power off. How is him turning the power back on MY decision?