When people make promises then break them.....

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We moved into this house last August and decided to rent the house from these landlords who can't seem to keep their words. We are very good with paying rent and have never been late and keep their house in very good condition so they are happy with us for that reason. Last November when it began to get cold out and the weather was changing it's season to winter, our pipes froze and we didn't have water for about three days. The morning we realised that we had no water, we called the landlords and told them what was going on. Three days later, they sent over a plumber. This house has no basement and has two crawl spaces. One is located by our bedroom but in the big closet and the other is in the bathroom. The plumber decided to leave a little heater under the crawl space by our bedroom in the big closet and leave it there for a few hours to see if it would thaw out the pipes and get the water working again. When the plumber came back, he noticed that the pipes were still frozen and still no water and that was about 5pm. Him and his assistant took the little safety heater to the other crawl space located in the bathroom and put it in there. While he was down under the crawl space, I heard something and seen from the corner of my eye sparks fly out from the breaker box which is located in the kitchen. The reason I could see the breaker box from the living room is because our house has an open concept. I called to the men and hubby who was standing by the bathroom talking to the plumber and his assistant just to know what he was doing and told them what I had seen and they said there was an old industrial heater hardwired and that's what caused the sparks because he tried to turn it on. He needed more heat in that crawl space so it would thaw out the pipes. The plumber and his assistant decided that he was going to leave that little heater in the crawl space over night and come back the next morning. After the plumber and his assistant left our house, we wanted to cook something to eat because we hadn't ate supper yet. Hubby wanted to go out to eat at a restaurant and I said no because we just went grocery shopping and had plenty of food to cook and eat. We decided on fish sticks and I went to turn on the oven and noticed that the power was out. When the plumber blew that fuse in the breaker box because of that old industraial heater, we knew that it was hardwired in with the stove. Hubby flicked the breaker in the box and we heard something ignight. We both stopped what we were doing,looked at each other and ran to the bathroom. I couldn't believe what I was seeing which was black smoke coming out of the crawl space trap door and hubby looked under there and seen that there was a fire. We called our neighbor Jimmy to see if he had an extinguisher and he didn't be he was over here in no time at all. With him he had a large plastic blue cooler filled with water. He ran passed me and straight to the bathroom where the smoke was coming from. He jumped down into the crawl space and threw the water on it. With doing that it fueled the fire and it seemed to get worse. I really wanted to open up a window because of the stench of the smoke and it was getting difficult to breathe but the neighbor told me not to open the window and cause a breeze and make the fire worse. I called 911 and by the time I called them hubby came back with a small fire extinguisher and put the fire out and bought us some time until the fire department showed up. It did reignite by the time the firefighters entered the house. They put out the fire after an hour and did make some damages on the outside of the house by pulling the deck away from the house and putting a huge hole in the siding. The landlord's wife showed up and told us that she felt so bad and was overly concerned. She allowed my son and I to stay overnight at her place just because of the smoke smell. Because we didn't have water she let us clean up and have a shower and we had a nice sleep. The next few days after this all happened, the house seemed to have a lot of traffic with insurance adjusters and more plumbers, electricans and contractors. We ended up saving the landlords $500.00 for having to pay for his deductable by me saying I would clean up, plus plumber costs because my hubby did all the plumbing work to get the water going. He saved them six visits from the plumbers. I'm not sure how much a plumber would charge someone just for entering a customer's home? A couple of weeks later the landlord told us he wasn't going to charge us any rent for January and we thanked him for it. In the beginning of April he told us that he used our damage deposit for that month's rent and now we have to repay back the damage deposit?? He also said to me that he was going to take $150.00 off of May's rent which he didn't do either. I think from now on I'm going to have to get promises in writing!! Have you ever had someone take back their words or promises?