UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Once upon a time, a foreign tenant leased a condo unit just before the world shut down.

Then the pandemic hit.

He flew back to his home country—but kept paying rent, kept the lease alive, kept everything exactly as it was. The unit stayed locked, quiet, untouched.

Until one day, it didn’t.

A water leak appeared. The condo admin tried calling the tenant—no answer. Time was ticking, water was running, so they escalated to the unit owner. With the owner’s consent, they entered the unit, fixed the leak, and prevented further damage.

So far, so good.

But before leaving, someone did one more thing.

They flipped the main breaker off.

Months later, the tenant finally returned. He opened the door, walked in, and immediately noticed something was wrong. The unit was dead silent.

The electricity was off.

For most tenants, that would be a minor inconvenience. Some would even be thankful—no phantom electric bills, no wasted power.

But this tenant wasn’t most tenants.

Inside the unit was a wine chiller. Inside that chiller was a carefully curated collection of very, very expensive wine. Bottles meant to be kept at precise temperatures. Bottles that had been slowly cooking in tropical heat for months.

Every single one of them was ruined.

Over a million pesos down the drain. Not from negligence or malice, but just because one well-intentioned switch flipped...without asking.

So… who foots the bill? Is it the owner? The admin?

Lesson:

Never, ever turn off a unit’s main breaker without the tenant’s explicit permission. You don’t know what’s plugged in.