At what point does a tenant's complaining feel excessive to you?
Boyfriend feels that it is OK to tell our landlord any time something isn't working well. I've had landlords in the past who blamed me for literally anything that stopped working in my apartment. So I tend to not say anything unless it's a serious safety hazard or it's something that we cannot function without (like when our oven died. Though Boyfriend had to push me into asking for that to be fixed; left to my own devices I would've just gotten by with the microwave because I figured we'd get blamed for breaking the oven somehow.)
Our current issue is that it has been in the mid- to upper 80s in our apartment according to our thermometer, and we're having a hard time sleeping in the heat. We can't control the heat in our apartment (radiators), nor do we pay for it. Most of the knobs on the radiators will not turn so we can't adjust them that way. We've started sleeping with all the windows open, but it's been windy so the windows rattle a lot and the blinds bang against the windows. So it doesn't really solve the sleep issue. We complained about this before Christmas, the maintenance guy came and turned it down, it was fine for a couple weeks. Last week it started getting into the single digits outside and the heat again started blasting, though Landlord says he hasn't touched it.
So Boyfriend sent an email complaining about it today. Tone is a problem for him in email sometimes, and I think he sounded kind of pissed off. Now I'm trying to smooth it over: "we're so sorry to keep complaining about this, we know it's hard to keep heat consistent in an older building, we wouldn't say anything if it weren't REALLY unbearable, our elderly cat is suffering in the heat too...."
I guess my question is, as a landlord, is this a reasonable thing to complain about? And if it was fixed but then the problem recurs, is it reasonable to complain again? How many times? At some point should we just let it go and deal? I mean, he's paying for all this heat. This is so wasteful. I'd think he'd want to know about it. But my past landlord experiences have probably colored my views. Meanwhile, Boyfriend thinks I have no spine, but I think he's erring on the side of being too demanding.
We expect to move this spring and need a good reference from this guy.
If it makes a difference, our landlord is new. He's in his 20s, has never owned property before, and his father bought the building for him so he could learn to manage a property. He seems very earnest and like he wants to do this right, but he doesn't seem to know a whole lot yet. Which I guess is understandable.