At first glance The Springs appears to be a really great place to live, but looks can be deceiving. The office staff was nice at the beginning, but that cheerfulness was quickly replaced with inept inefficiency. There is a terrible feral cat problem there. The wild cats are so inbred that one batch of kittens had 8 toes on each foot. Their feet were so big it was like there were wearing flippers. The office was completely unconcerned about this problem, and even told me that one of the unspayed females had been abandoned by a tenant almost 5 years previously. They had never made any effort to remove the cat in 5 years.

The apartment complex is about 30 years or so, and many of the air conditioning units need replacing. My AC began running continuously, and I called for service. They had the AC repairman out the next day, and he was able to temporarily fix the problem. He told me that the unit had a slow freon leak and this would happen every 2-3 months. He had told the apartment manager about the problem as it was common there, but the management refused to replace the units. So every third month my electric bill would go sky high.

The apartments are not energy efficient. The washer and dryer are either outside off the balcony/patio or either a stackable unit inside that looks like it came out of the Barbie budget camper with a whopping 3 item capacity.

The grounds are fairly well maintained other than the sprinkler systems which flood the sidewalks with so much water that in many places there is black mold growing on the sidewalks. This makes those sections of sidewalk EXTREMELY slippery when wet. And the great news is that that when you come home at night and the sprinklers are on, you can't see where the moldy spots are. Busted my butt big time twice while I lived there walking to my apartment at night. But since I had no permanent injury (other than to my pride) and wasn't suing them, the office couldn't have cared less.

Due to the age of the apartments they are not constructed with any degree of soundproofing. This much more noticeable between floors than side to side between apartments. While I was there a young couple moved into the apartment above me. Their 4 year old daughter loved to run through the apartment. Down below in my apartment it sounded like a herd of stampeding elephants. Then on Thanksgiving morning (a nice day to sleep in) they decided to vacuum their apartment at 6:30 a.m. That sounded rather like a tornado punctuated with stampeding elephants.

The complex is fenced but not gated. Security guards make rounds several times during the night and do little or nothing to stop the not infrequent car burglaries.

I had to pay a $600 pet deposit to move into the apartment. I thoroughly cleaned the apartment when I moved out even cleaning the carpet myself. The place was absolutely spotless (much cleaner than when I moved in). And while they did refund my entire deposit to me it only took them 8 months to do so.

The pluses are that it is in best part of Bakersfield close to the university and shopping. It has well kept lawns and mature trees.

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