Landlord Double-charged Rent

Location: Alberta, Ca

Hello, first time poster here so apologies if the format isn’t correct etc

Myself and my partner moved into our apartment 3 months ago following a cross-province move. We signed our lease for February 1st and moved in halfway through February. Our rental agency has been nothing but a nightmare to communicate with the entire time. This is my first lease and I fear we might be stuck in it for the duration of the year.

Anyhow- with that background out of the way, the situation is as follows;

When we first signed our lease we were automatically enrolled in pre-authorized payments for the rent, this had screwed us over by double pulling the money once in March and leaving us with a pile of NSF fees as they kept trying to pull the second payment over a weekend. Somehow this counted towards a strike (they have a three strike policy that typically only applies to late rent payments. The policy wording is vague ‘three strikes result in legal action’ but I presume that means termination of our lease).

In April, we decided enough was enough because we didn’t want to worry about it happening again as the NSF fees put a considerable dent in our finances. Neither of us work high-paying jobs, so ~$300 in fees just isn’t something we can afford to risk paying twice.

We contacted our property manager who sent over a cancelation form for the pre-authorization on rent payments. (There is no fine print on this form besides stating the form must be signed and received no later than the 23rd of a month to be valid for the following month) we signed the form on the 1st of April, and confirmed with our property manager that it would take effect before our next rent due date.

So, May 1st rolled around and we paid our rent manually a few days in advance (as recommended by the rental agency), then we woke up on the first and found that rent had not only been paid manually but that they had collected a pre-authorized payment of our rent. This put our account severely into the negatives and we had to call our bank to put a block on the payment to avoid NSF fees ($20 fee to block- rather than a $50 NSF fee each time it tried to pull from the account). However, our property manager will not hear back from accounting until next week. This mistake has left us with no money for groceries, other bills, or transportation to and from work.

When this was expressed (politely) to our property manager she apologized, and offered to put a refer a friend bonus on our account that will take affect for the following month ($100 I believe) and ended that last text message with “and pls do not tell anyone about this ????????”.

As I said- this is my first apartment, so I’m not sure how big of a mistake she actually made here or what can do about it. I get paid next week and can mostly figure out a way to get by- however I don’t know how to make sure this doesn’t keep happening, I’m just at a loss. Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks!