A FEW years ago I was doing some shopping when a man I had been praying to meet entered the shop.

It was my desire that when that time came, I would have a sjambok in hand to sort him out.

Mr Wang owed me a substantial amount of money after he failed to refund the rental deposit I had paid for a three-bedroom flat I shared with my two friends for two years.

Although I shared the flat, I was the sacrificial lamb who paid the deposit because my two flatmates did not have the money then to contribute equally to the deposit.

At the end of our lease, when we were supposed to move out, Mr Wang made up all sorts of stories about why he could not give me my R2000 deposit. I was a cadet journalist so the amount was substantial then, felt like the equivalent of R20000 today.

First we had to clean the walls because, according to Mr Wang, they were dirtier than when we moved in. Then we had to fix one plate of the stove. The plate had stopped working midway through our rental contract.

Our contract with Mr Wang was equally dubious. It gave him exclusive power to decide whether I would get my money or not. I, on the other hand, had to keep my two flatmates motivated to help me sort out all these problems so that I could eventually get my money.

My nightmare began when the date he was supposed to deposit the money came and went. When I called him he insisted he had deposited the money and asked me to recheck my bank balance.

A day later he started avoiding my calls and I had to use various numbers to get him to pick up the phone, which he would immediately put down upon hearing my voice.

Clearly, I had been scammed and I was fuming. How can Mr Wang pull a fast one on me like that? I set out to do some detective work to trace Mr Wang but my amateur sleuth exploits yielded nothing because his invoices did not have information that would lead me to him.

I recalled a conversation I'd had with him when we were signing the lease. He told me he lived with his family near Bedfordview and they loved to eat out at the nearby malls.

I spent weeks driving around aimlessly in and around Bedfordview hoping to bump into him.

You can imagine how elated I was when I saw him pushing a trolley full of groceries up my aisle at one shop.

I lunged at him like a lunatic, demanding that he open his wallet and pay me my R2000. Mr Wang suddenly did not understand English and started to speak in an agitated manner in Chinese.

Needless to say, this attracted the security guards who then chased us out of the shop.

I will never forget watching Mr Wang or should I say my R2000 driving off into the sunset. This incident taught me a lot about shady landlords in Johannesburg. Most of them now prey on foreigners and students.

Despite the Rental Housing Act also protecting tenants Mr Wang acted with impunity withholding my deposit. I cannot fathom how in this day and age when consumer rights are more protected that some landlords still get away with daylight robbery.

They charge exorbitant once-off and non-refundable administration fees that desperate parents pay to secure accommodation for students.

At the end of the lease, they come up with all sorts of tactics to keep much of the deposit.

A friend of mine has a son at Wits University and she told me appalling stories about these con artists.

For the R4000 deposit my friend paid last year, she received only R300 back after she was told they deducted money for unauthorised sleep overs.

For 2013 the landlord claimed that her son had night visitors who didn't leave his flat 13 times and this amounted to R2600.

Then there was R120 for pest control, R600 for damage and another fee for professional cleaners. Any excuse they could find.

The idea is not to give you your money back and fighting with them can be exhausting.

This is Johannesburg and someone, somewhere is out to scam you, including the so-called respectable landlord. Beware of these landlord sharks.

Follow me on Twitter @MapulaNkosi

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