Review History for anonymous

Teal Run Apartments


Review Author Icon

anonymous

Resident 2010 - 2011

8/11/2011

Teal Run RUINED our life!!!

Last September my husband and I moved to Teal Run hoping to get our own place again after being knocked off our feet financially. Staff was rude to me over the phone before I even signed our lease! I brushed it off happy to get our own place again. The leasing agent, Kelly, pressured us into putting $100 hold on this apartment before we could even see it. She said there were still tenants here and she didn't know when they were leaving. So we reserved it. When we finally signed the lease, then Kelly was like, "Oh, yeah I forgot to mention internet here is privatized," and you know that was deliberate timing! You can't get internet separate from cable and basic cable is $25 per month. DSL speed is horrible. We pay $55 per month for mid-grade DSL (a whopping 1.5 MB/sec) with basic cable. You can have AT&T for phones, but you'll be in the Bermuda triangle for ISPs until you move out. Teal Run will milk every dime they can out of you so document everything! So the leasing agent took us to our new front door and one of the keys was bad so she said she'd make a new one. When we opened the door I immediately saw a huge, about two foot crack along the door frame, running straight through the metal catch part for the lock (which is extremely unsafe and we could have fought for them to fix if we had had the money to challenge them). After she left, my husband bent down to look at the return vent in the living room. He touched it and it fell off the wall. The cabinets have to knobs and no grooves and they stick so badly I've often broken my nails on them. No one had bothered to repaint before we moved in so there were visible patch jobs all over the walls. The closet door in the second bedroom has a track on the very top instead of the bottom so was very unsafe for the babies as they could push it in and it could fall off. The windows in every room were extremely large and long and for a basement apartment makes it very easy to get in. They run exactly one foot from the floor to one foot from the ceiling. The metal bar for our slider had the hinges but the bar had been broken off and replaced with a wooden dowel. The floor in the kitchen had a long crack in it. The stove's up arrow for the timer was broken so you had to push the down arrow (from 59 minutes) to set it. The kitchen is so small you can open up the oven door and it will almost touch the dishwasher. The dishwasher is useless as it just bakes on soap so heavy (and I tried everything to fight it) that finally we resorted to using it as a drying rack for the hand-washed dishes. The apartment is two bedroom so can have up to four people living in it but there is so little cabinet space in the kitchen you almost have to buy your food weekly. There is under the stair storage but you can't use the space as a pantry to store more food. Bathroom fans have awful ventilation and mildew grows very easily. Toilets and toilet paper holders sit very low to the ground. You can have your own washer and dryer in some units and thank god we bought ours because the community laundry is appalling. I went there one day to do laundry and the washer was literally only twelve inches deep and it was $1.25 per load. There are no chairs to sit and the floor is dirty. The dryers are $1.50 per cycle and after I put my change in I opened the door to find the lint trap uncleaned and full of tiny black rubber hair bands. I wanted to get my money back but Teal Run apparently doesn't manage them (so they won't give you a refund in the main office) so I had to contact a different company to get my refund which took about a week and a half. Maintenance men here won't touch the dryers (even when I pointed out the concern I had of black rubber bands in the dryer vent which may melt or cause a fire) but it's not their job to maintain them, that's a different company (other than the one I got my refund from). So I went home with a basket full of soggy laundry declaring I would never do community laundry again. So that's when we bought our own. Well, a couple weeks after we moved in the new lady up above us flooded out our kitchen. It came in through the corner of the light fixture and soaked all of our rugs. We called maintenance and two guys showed up. One asked us if we had any of our OWN pots and pans we could use to catch the water! Then he said cause we lived in a basement apartment that we should get USED to these kinds of things happening! Then they said they would give us a new light fixture so we wouldn't have to worry about mold growth and my husband peered up at the guy and saw him spraying down the old one with antibacterial stuff and they just gave us back the old one instead. The maintenance men claimed the neighbor above us had incorrectly hooked up her washer and they told her to get a certain part for it and until she did they told her not to use it. Well the next day she tried to use it again and flooded out our kitchen a second time! So after maintenance went over to the neighbor's and the situation ceased to happen again (thankfully). About two and half months into our lease, we started having trouble with our water heater. Something kept tripping the breaker so it needed to be set like five times a day or more. We called and maintenance came out about three times. I had mentioned since I needed warm water for baby bottles that we had reset it ourselves a couple of times due to the sheer inconvenience of having to call maintenance out so frequently, especially a week before Christmas. Well apparently by removing the panel to press the big red button to reset it, we were "defacing" Teal Run's property and that made us liable to replace the whole water heater if it broke. Okay...so it gets better. About five months into our lease, are utility room was mysteriously flooded out. The water was coming through the electric panel of our furnace! We tried to contact the main line to get an emergency maintenance guy and due to a recent storm the line was down. We were terrified of getting juiced or a fire starting but we had to wait til morning to contact anyone. So the maintenance guys came in three different times to "fix" the problem. They had a different story each time. The last one said it was due to the piping being backed up for the air conditioner and that sometimes it needs to be drained or it will back up and leak back into the apartment. Colorful, but not the truth. upon further investigation, there was a nice warning label on the front of our air conditioning unit that reads do not stack metal on metal (like don't put the air conditioner on top of the furnace) which apparently Teal Run staff can't read because they did. So the drip plate for the condensation from the air conditioner actually melted from the heat and the water was draining out the warped part on the backside and trailing down through the electric panel of our furnace. Naturally if we told anyone we had removed the cover to look, we would be "defacing their property", so we can't complain about it and tell them why. But I was concerned and angry that maintenance seemed to be so stupid or so lazy they wouldn't ever seem to fix this problem. For a week we fought with them and finally after I was told it was fixed and the had left, as soon as he stepped out the door it started dripping again! i stormed into the main office and the leasing agent kept giving me the brush off because she was with a prospective client and I got so mad I turned to the other people coming in and told them "don't move here, they don't fix anything." Funny as it seems in retrospect I found out later there were dire consequences for my actions. About two days later staff broke into our home without warning to leave a non-emergency notice threatening me that if my attitude continued that they would ban me and my husband from ever entering the office again! And all rent payments would have to be dropped off in the drop-box. Since I was home I heard the door open and close and it terrified me! The notice was exactly halfway between the outside and the inside of our apartment between the door and the doorframe. Unfortunately the attorney I spoke said it's frowned upon but in MI you really can't fight that in court, although according to all the tenant rights websites I've read the landlord/staff is supposed to give you a 24-hour notice that they will be entering your apartment for a non-emergency reason. Our neighbors upstairs were awfully noisy at all hours of the day and there were numerous men coming in and out of the apartment carrying laundry baskets, often arguments between mother and daughter were audible through our utility room vents and also outside with the windows open or on the patio. We also had a crazy lady that always went out and ripped up the property behind our apartment to keep the wildlife and/or re-landscape property that obviously wasn't hers. One neighbor came over to my husband, drunk at 2am one day and claimed some guy had broken in through his window and asked my husband if he had seen the guy run our way. Maintenance is mostly rude when they enter our apartment. The lead guy out here accused my and my husband of lying and in our own home no less! So after being here 11 months our lease is nearly up, my husband took a job that pays nearly three times what he was making before. About four days before he left (last week) we received a notice (again in our doorframe without notice given to us) that our landlord has decided to terminate our lease agreement early and without reason. Our attorney said legally they don't have to give a reason! So we had 30 days to vacate. I called all over Battle Creek and only one apartment community had any openings for a 2 bedroom apartment. One. On the day we are supposed to turn in our keys. I applied there, paid teh sixty dollars for the application fee for both me and my husband. Afterward they ran his credit and said we would only need to pay the $200 security deposit (instead of a month's rent) which made me ecstatic. The next day I went over to pay the $100 hold on our new home and was told our application of lease had been denied due to a bad landlord review (from Melissa here at Teal Run), which means ANY place we go to rent will deny us! So not only do we have three weeks left to find a home, but we can't move anywhere because of her blacklisting us! And from what I've read online her reason could be as simple as being mad at us for wanting repairs done to the apartment! Because the lease lady at the other place said it wasn't because of my husband's new job and because of the low deposit I know his credit wasn't a factor so obviously that only leaves the landlord's personal bias toward us! But no one will tell me the actual reason!!! So where are we going to live now? With everything that went wrong in this place, we documented everything. Behind the white panel in the crawl space, my husband saw that the main support beam for this building had actually been severed about an inch from the apartment above us. the wood was all splintery on the edges! Lights dim when we turn on the vacuum cleaner but the housing code guy I spoke with over the phone said code is so loose that all it says for a requirement is "do the lights work" not "does the wiring need to be updated"? Air blows through the electrical outlets. If you like grilling, plan to do it after hours. You can have a grill here, but it states that it must be ten feet away from the apartment, but not on Teal Run's property (in other words, you can't grill unless you chance it after hours). The kids over here dart into traffic in the parking lot and don't watch for cars. i lost a part to my car and when I circled around to go and retrieve it some kid ran out in front of me and carried it off with him before I could say anything. The dumpsters are awful if you're short, because they are too cheap to get the ones with the side panels you can slide so you have to hoist the bags over your head (I know cause I'm short), so a few times I had to leave the bags out beside the dumpsters simply because I wasn't strong enough to put them inside. Oh yeah, and now that it's summer, we also have a problem with ants too. Our lease agreement states pest removal is our responsibility as tenants but the problem stems from the actual foundation itself which is deeply cracked just beneath our carpet right by our patio door and runs the length of most of our living room. We sealed off the three areas in the kitchen and then they started coming out through the space in the baseboard at the end of the hallway, which means they are in the walls too! Thankfully I had cinnamon handy as that is a natural ant repellent but I am not going to sprinkle it all over the carpet. And I refuse to use toxic chemicals when I have two babies to take care of! One is just walking and the other one rolls everywhere. We are by no means dirty people but it just goes to show how poorly this building is constructed. About two weeks ago a guy walked up to our patio and literally splashed ant killer UP the corner of the siding! Cause you know, ants live up the siding and not on the ground where there's grass and dirt to build nests. This was the worst decision I've ever made to move here. The review of the Arbors across the street were worse and much more unsafe so I chose here. And now look at what they've done to us. In short, Teal Run's buildings are dangerous to live in, everyone on staff is extremely rude (whether it's sweetly said to your face or not it's still an insult the way they say it and if you get upset by their behavior YOU are the one in the wrong!), nothing gets fixed, staff lies, and the landlady is a slumlord. Parking is sometimes a pain because the neighbors often let their neighbors park up front so we'll have to park a building over cause all the other spots are taken and Teal Run has a policy where only one vehicle you own (you're allowed two) is allowed to be parked in front of your apartment, the other has to be parked in the overflow parking. Since we face another building I'm not really sure where "overflow" is but I'm betting it's far away from our building. Oh yeah and the leasing agent lady always offers a receipt for rent payments but don't ask her for one! Everytime I do she slides her jaw to the side and sets it as if extremely irritated she has to bend over to the drawer to pull out the receipt booklet and write one out for me. (Must be a pain to have to actually do her job or something). Do yourself a favor and don't move here. It will ruin your life if you do. If you are looking for low income housing to get on your feet, like we did, please stay with your friends or relatives until you can get a house or a better apartment that isn't in low income housing. You'll be much happier someplace else. I guarantee it. Be sure to tell your friends of this review too and encourage them to avoid this place too. If for some reason you DO decide to move here keep the number for Legal Services of SWMI handy. You'll need quick access to a lawyer to learn your tenant rights.

    Review 7 out of 10

    Share This Review

    Check Availability

    Teal Run Apartments

    March 2024

    Sun
    Mon
    Tue
    Wed
    Thu
    Fri
    Sat
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10
    11
    12
    13
    14
    15
    16
    17
    18
    19
    20
    21
    22
    23
    24
    25
    26
    27
    28
    29
    30
    Beds

    0

    Baths

    0

    Share This Review