My roommate broke our $400 vacuum trying to suck up a flooded carpet and didn't say a word for 3 weeks
So back in March my roommate decided to clean up a spilled bucket of mop water with our vacuum instead of a towel or the shop vac in the garage. I came home to the thing making this awful grinding noise and it smelled like burnt hair, and he just shrugged it off as normal. Three weeks later I finally took it apart on the kitchen table and found the whole motor housing packed with wet carpet fuzz and a bent fan blade. Repair guy in Mesa quoted me $180 to fix it, which is almost half what the vacuum cost new, so now it just sits in the closet. He finally fessed up when I showed him the receipt for the parts, and then asked if we could split the replacement cost. Has anyone gotten a roommate to actually pay up for something they wrecked, or do you just eat it and hide the new stuff?
Wait, is a $400 vacuum really worth all this drama though? People act like these things are built to last but most of them are pretty cheap inside, and sucking up water is gonna kill almost any normal vacuum no matter who does it. The part that bugs me is the three weeks of silence, not the vacuum itself. That said, asking you to split the cost when he's the one who broke it is kinda ridiculous, he should just pay for it or buy a new one himself. If he won't cough up the cash, I'd honestly just let it go and keep your stuff separate going forward, because chasing a roommate for $180 is a fast way to make home feel awful.