<human>: After moving out of my apartment in 2008, the property manager told me and my roommate that there were some damages caused by pets for about $300. Since it was my roommate's pet, he went to their office, wrote them a check, and they told him everything was square. I called afterwards and confirmed that there was no money owed. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I'm applying for a loan on my first house. My lender provided a full credit report (I've only gotten the score before this, which looked good), and to my surprise had a line item from the property management company that said nothing was overdue at 30 or 60 days, but something did show up as overdue 90 days. I contact them and they tell me I still owe them $375, but they'll take $325 to call it even (??). They never sent any notice via mail/email, never called, nor attempted to make any contact to me. After two weeks and several more calls with the former roommate, they realized that when my roommate came in to pay the balance, they applied it to his name and not to mine. They never apologized, but rather tried to emphasize how long and annoying it was to deal with the credit bureau in clearing this up. I'm going to check my report in the coming weeks to confirm it's no longer there. I feel like I've been wronged - my credit was affected for the past 4 years and they don't want to own up to it. What can I do to ensure this won't happen to others renting from them?

Can you give me a shortened version of the text?
<bot>: 4 yrs ago, my apartment manager dinged my credit for something that they messed up on. Is there anything I can do?