GREENSBORO, N.C. — Dennis Howard is a commercial property owner. He has been renting space to small business owners for dozens of years.
“The office area (for this building) is 500 square feet and there’s a warehouse area in back,” Howard said.
The Greensboro building is popular because of its usable office space attached to a 2,000-square-foot storage area. Howard often rented his buildings to previous clients.
“He called and told me the utility deposit would be $2,300,” Howard explained.
The deposit was unexpected and too much for the new tenant to pay. Howard called Duke Energy and the Utilities Commish in hopes of figuring this out.
“If they’re getting $1,700 or $2,000 a deposit on all these little spaces, they’re going to have trillions in the bank,” Howard said.
Howard reached out to his client and told him he understood that a large deposit was unreasonable. Howard allowed his client to break the lease and look for another space.
“I told him, listen, I do not expect you to pay that kind of utility deposit, I will bring your (rental space) deposit check back,” Howard said.
The nice gesture would cost Howard thousands of dollars if he couldn’t rent the space. He also thought it was wrong for a small business tenant to be charged a big deposit.
Howard decided to contact WFMY News 2 to try and understand why the deposit for an established client was so high.
We contacted Duke and after investigating, realized a simple mistake was made. The wrong usage code for the customer was entered.
Howard reached back out to the customer who agreed to resign a new lease for the space.
The issue appeared to be solved only for another issue to come up. When the customer requested power be hooked up again, the deposit was high. This time the issue involved the customer entering a different name on the application; one with no history. Eventually, it was all sorted out and the customer was not required to pay a deposit.
"You (WFMY News 2) got it to zero and now he agreed to take the property, everybody is happy,” Howard said.
In many cases, a utility deposit will be requested and required. A spokesperson with Duke Energy said it all depends on the space and the customer's history.