Living in Portola Meadows has been a miserable experience from the day I moved in. The supposedly clean apartment smelled like smoke since the carpets apparently were not cleaned prior to move-in, and more importantly, the air conditioner was an absolute disaster. In a nutshell, my air conditioner stopped working in the middle of one of the worst heat waves ever in Livermore. It turned out that the unit needed to be replaced and would take about a week to get the parts and install the new unit. In the meantime, the leasing office claimed they could do nothing about the situation and would not reimburse me for the weeks without air conditioning or allow me to get a motel until the air conditioner was fixed. They also offered my a fan, but initially I assumed the problem would be fixed quickly. Upon learning that it would be another week without air conditioning, the fan was no longer available because somebody else without air conditioning requested it. I also sub-leased the apartment through Oakwood since I am only here for the summer, so in order to get rid of me, the leasing office eventually refused to help me entirely because they didn't have a contract with me...way to pass the buck. Until I confronted them in the office about the situation, they were planning to wait until closing before they called me back so that they wouldn't have to deal with me that day. If this is any indication of their lack of respect for their tenants, which seems apparent based on the other reviews, I would avoid this apartment complex at all costs! I also agree with the other reviews in that most of the outlets do not work properly, and the bathroom wasn't cleaned prior to move-in.

User Responses
From: rater08	Date: 07/30/2007
what is the name of the manager?
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/27/2008
In my apartment, we keep having a smell, some sort of chemical smell that comes from sometimes the bathroom fan or sometimes from the air conditioning unit. We have had maintenance out twice. The first time they changed the air conditioning filter, (which obviously wasnt done before we moved in) then the second time, the maintenance guy smelled around my closets in the bathroom and even looked in the cabinets. He then said, it must be coming from upstairs. He asked/told me to go talk to the person upstairs and see if he is using chemicals. WTF, isnt that their job? Anyway, the smell comes and goes every couple of weeks or so. We think the guy upstairs either is cleaning car parts in his tub, chopping up body parts to get rid of it or he's got a meth lab up there... or at least it smells like one of those options...

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