Honest Review/Response to the Idiots comment 5/01
From:
-Anonymous-
Date posted:
1/31/2002
Years at this apartment:
2000
-
2002
The apartment itself is pretty decent and roomy, but cheaply finished and priced way above the market for around here. Apparently they do not realize the dot.com boom is over and people in Silicon Valley can't find jobs. The place is full of unrented apartments because the market is much lower than what they are asking.
Management is practically nonresponsive to maintenance requests, and the new management staff is very unprofessional - unlike the original management staff who were fairly honest. They enter your apartment without permission, call your emergency number for rental disputes and discuss personal financial information with nonparties to the lease, and they do not follow through with their promises.
I was initially promised that they would feed my cats for me when I was away (not so, I found out after I signed my lease.) They told me the trucking company across the street would be moved out within 3 months (it took over a year) - so the trucks kept me up at ALL hours for a year. They also told me initially I would have a deposit of $100, but when I went to sign the lease, the manager told me the leasing agent had mispoken and it was really $1000.
The person who wrote the "what are YOU idiots'" comment was clearly a member of management. I have read through the comments, and as someone who has lived here since DAY 1 of the opening of the complex, I can tell you they are 99% accurate. There IS a Mexican bar with hookers across the street. Until a year ago, there was (and still remains the remnants of) a trucking company that kept me awake ALL night. There IS a train that shakes the buildings and blares it's horn at unreasonable hours. For about 2 months, every morning at 7 am, and I lived on the corner of one of the buildings, the gardeners would lean up against my bedroom window and talk before they would go to work. I could hear every word of their conversation! There is also a mysterious ventilation system that carried conversations from the (shared by all residents) parking garage into my bathroom. Despite maintenance requests to have it fixed, the air conditioning vent worked poorly in my bedroom, so I had to sleep with my door open during the summer or I couldn't stand the heat. I had ants in my apartment twice, so bad they covered my countertop completely in one day. I must have killed a hundred of them, and they just kept coming. The garage leaked sewage, and one morning I caught the maintenance people hosing down my car to get the sewage off before I could find it. For 2 months I had a board over the hole in my parking space because they took that long to fix it. My roommate got so sick of dealing with the management she couldn't even go in the office anymore. They made her too mad. She referred to them as "the idiots." It's quite appropriate.
The gate access/pizza comment is not accurate. I have buzzed in people many times, but I had to try several combinations to get it to work, because not only did they not explain it when they installed it, the management gave inaccurate directions. You have to press 9# to get the gate to open.
The people who work there are SOOO incompetent. I cant tell you how many times I found a "Notice" on my door and exclaimed "Youve got to be kidding!" Twice while I lived there I was asked to sign addendums to the lease (which I refused), once to agree to some satellite agreement, and another to agree to take on the water and trash payments, which under my lease they were required to pay. I guess they had come up with another way to make money off the tenants. The pool heat was shut off during the energy crisis (ok, nice touch) but they never turned it back on, and that was over a year ago.
During the holidays, they closed the office WITHOUT NOTICE and my Christmas presents ended up locked in the management office. I tried to call the emergency maintenance number on the apartment answering machine, and it turns out their contract with the answering service had ended and there was no way to get in touch with them WHATSOEVER. I even tried calling the new management companys home office, and I even left messages at Pavona and the new company. They never responded to me, not even an apology. What if there would have been a real emergency and not just an inconvenience' I shudder to think that my safety or even my life might be in the hands of such incompetent people.
The only saving grace of the entire complex was Camille, the old apartment manager, but she either quit or was laid off when the new management took over. Camille was great and professional. Karie Hahn, the new manager, has acted unprofessionally a number of times. My rent check bounced, quite accidentally I can assure you, and rather than calling me or leaving me a note, she called my mothers house in Louisiana who was my emergency reference. Fine, if they were just looking for a number or contact information, but she told my brother, who was not a party to the lease, that she was going to sue MY MOTHER for my bouncing a check. I was in shock - how outrageous, humiliating, and unprofessional. Im 31 years old, my family has no responsibility for my finances. I cant even imagine what prompted her to act so egregiously. She had my home number (obviously, the gate access calls my home number and it works), my work number, and my address. I was home all day that day. She called my mother FIRST! Can you believe that' Why' When I called to talk to her about it and informed her that I believed she had broken the law by doing such a thing (invasion of privacy, California Fair Debt Collection Act, to name a couple), she told me it was her right and California law authorized her to act in such a way. Really' Clearly she is not very well educated and I can only assume it is the result of improper training on the part of the management company. If not illegal, it was certainly immoral, unwarranted, unprofessional, unnecessary, indecent, disrespectful, rude, and quite frankly stupid on her part. Unfortunately this was typical behavior here.
Their security is extremely lacking. The so called security gates do not work - several do not even shut, the wind could blow them open. They changed the lock on one of the main complex entry doors and never gave me a key.
At year 2, they asked me to increase my rent from $1950ish/month to over $2800/month. I immediately turned in a 30 day notice, and they called me and pleaded with me to stay, and reduced the increase to $2195/month. It was still a big increase and I was not happy about it. Included with my new lease was an agreement that if I broke the lease I would owe them a cancellation fee of one month's rent (which they calculated at their "market" rent of $2800) PLUS a return of the difference of my "discount" of $605 for the entire 12 month lease period, for a grand total of over $10,000. I could not believe it. Ten thousand dollars for breaking a lease' What kind of deceptive practice is this' I'm sure people sign the agreement everyday too because they don't know any better. I crossed out this amount and agreed to pay one month's rent or actual damages, whichever was less - I hand wrote this in before I returned it and they accepted it.
Once, during a heavy rainstorm, believe it or not the sewage backed up into my showers and washer/dryer area. It ruined the flooring in my bathroom which peeled up so high you could trip over it(which despite several requests they never fixed), and it destroyed some carpet in the hallway entry area. They replaced the carpet within a week, and cleaned the tubs, but I was totally disgusted from the whole thing. It was NASTY! The smell lasted in my apartment for over a month, and when I called to complain, they told me they had determined it was my cats' litterbox and not the sewage problem, as if I couldn't tell the difference. Sewage had seeped into the backing on the carpet! Of course it smelled. It wasn't just my apartment, either. It affected 2 of my neighbors as well. I came home from work that day and my entryway and bathrooms were completely flooded with raw sewage. I was offered NO compensation whatsoever.
I have no reason to disparage this place. Honestly I rather enjoyed it for a while. At first the staff was friendly and helpful, even courteous. However, their turnover rate is absurd. Every time I entered the office, which was at least twice a month to pick up packages, there was someone working who I did not recognize. Recognize you' Forget about it. I was one of the first tenants in the apartments, and after the first round of staff left, that was it. They had no idea who lived there, any Joe on the street could claim to live there and get access, or just open one of the many broken gates. I know this is long, but don't mistake this for anger. I'm not angry with Pavona, I have moved out and I could care less what happens there. However, I feel obligated to warn others of their shoddy business practices in the hope that it might save someone else the headache I went through. Look at all of these postings - obviously I am not the only one who feels this way. Take notice and do not rent from Pavona. You will regret it as I do.
Overall I would not rent there again. It was a disappointing experience all around. I was not treated like someone who gave them over $50,000 during my two year stay in rent. They are rude, unprofessional, and incompetent. I think that about sums it up.
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