Hello! So sorry to hear about that and I really hope things can get worked out for you.

I work for a building management company and I would personally never advise you to never pay with a money order. While they can be tracked it’s very difficult to do so and money orders are so easy to steal.

I always recommend paying with a cashier’s check. Even if those are lost your bank is far more capable of assisting you than wherever you purchase money orders from.

Also if you have proof of payment such as a receipt from the landlord that would be super beneficial.

Try and get the money order receipt if you can. Then you can reach out to where you purchased it and try to get a refund if it was “lost” or if it was cashed they should be able to trace that back to who/where it was cashed and if it was done so by the management company or someone else.

Hope this helps in the future at least <3 I don’t really deal with commercial, more so residential but the practices involving money remain generally similar.

I’ll see if I’m in a financial setting to donate if I can.

Best wishes to you <3

So I sent what I could. Wish I could do more but I don’t have much in disposable income sadly :(

I was able to read up a bit more on your gofundme and gosh that sucks!

Whenever I have to send money with some form of check I would recommend doing a cashier’s check. The issue with money orders is that anyone can just put their name on them and cash them. Cashier’s checks are direct to the person or entity and can’t be changed because the name is printed on the check.

While it’s a little expensive, if you do have to mail a check, then I would recommend to do so with tracking and then request a signature as well. It’s more expensive than regular mail but it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Though if you’re wiring money over I suppose that’s better. Then request a receipt if you can get one! In California it was a requirement but in some places it may be different, idk..

Oh I'm just now seeing your second comment, thank you so much <3

Thank you for your advice. To put it into context a little better, I've been at this location for almost 4 years. Up until last April, the previous owners managed the property themselves, and took only cash/money orders/checks. My bank charges a bit for cashier's checks, so I always just gave my previous landlord money orders while keeping track of payments myself with receipts, stubs, and confirmation numbers. Never had a single issue. It was always given in person. However, when the new owners came in with a whole management team in April, and their office being 50+ miles away, it put a halt to a lot of common practices around here and there was a ton of communication issues and confusion for months. They were VERY unprofessional and let the property go into ruin for 4 months with no maintenance, little communication, and were very confusing. The first few months they -demanded- we mail in either checks or money orders, and as usual, most of us mailed in money orders since thats what we were familiar with. However, I only mailed the one money order, and have been wiring money ever since because of their bad management practices. I could go on and on about a LOT of really bad and sketchy things they've done to me, the property, and my leasing neighbors... it's possibly the worst case I've ever had for leasing property.

Unfortunately the timing of this just is the worse, and that's my main issue right now. Every business runs into issues here and there, snags, etc. Don't even get me started on how we BARELY survived COVID and the lockdowns... but this one just hit at a really bad time. What's worse is they -refuse- to give confirmation of payments or receipts. They slyly put that into the transferred leases to all of us when the new owners came in.

Oh goodness. They don’t seem like fun people to deal with. Sounds very unprofessional.

Our leases at work say that a receipt is available upon requests. Online payments automatically get a receipt.

That sounds ridiculous

Online payments would be a luxury with these people... I've asked them to provide an online portal a million times... but they don't care. I swear they're laundering money or something.