I would have written this review back when I moved out of AMLI at Clairmont, but I was so frustrated with dealing with them that I just didn't even want to think about them anymore. But, now that I'm thinking of moving back to Atlanta, it got me thinking about this place again and the terrible experience I had.

I lived at AMLI for one year. I guess I was drawn to it because it looked nice (on the surface), was only slightly more expensive than my previous apartment, and because it was right on the highway. I took a basement apartment (apartment 403, I believe) along the back of one of the buildings. It was slightly cheaper than the other ones. I asked them why it was cheaper, and they said something like that was just how they priced them. I guessed it might be because of safety concerns or something, that it was because it was the bottom floor on the back of a building, so it might be more accessible to potential thieves. Or something like that. I didn t really know or care at that point. It was cheaper and would be easier to move stuff in and out, which was nice since I was already planning to move to NC at the end of my year lease.

My problems started sometime around the winter of 2002-2003. First, there were the ants. I would find lines of them marching across my kitchen all the time. I think that my kitchen was the cleanest it has ever been that year, because it became a daily routine to spray lines of ants, clean the surfaces of ant carcasses and spray, and check all of my food, throwing out whatever might be attracting the ants. To their credit, management was aware of the problem and regularly updated the community about what they were doing to combat it. What they did, evidently, was put something around the outside of the buildings that would kill the ants. It was not an immediate death for them, however, so instead of coming home to find lines of live ants all over the place, it would just be dead ones. So, I would still have to clean up the ant carcasses. I m an easygoing kind of person who doesn t complain a lot and gives people the benefit of the doubt, so my threshold is pretty high before I get really bothered. The ants were a hassle, but not too terrible for me.

Then, one day during the spring/summer, I woke up to find an inch of water covering the floor of my bathroom and kitchen. I mopped up all of the water from the linoleum, and management sent out someone to deal with my carpet. Some water had soaked into it, so they came and sucked it out, took the foam padding from underneath the carpet, and treated the carpet with an anti-fungus solution to prevent any mildew problems. A few days later, they replaced the foam padding and took the huge fan that had been left to dry the carpet out of my apartment. So, again, to me it was just a minor inconvenience, and management seemed helpful with the situation. What had happened was that the water heater in one of the apartments above mine burst, or leaked, or something, and the water had come down inside the wall between my kitchen and bathroom. Since I was on the bottom floor, it didn t have anywhere else to go but to collect on my floor.

A couple of weeks later, about two months before I was moving, my water heater started to get a slow leak. I found my carpet soaked a bit in the hallway. They sent out someone to fix the leak, and someone to do the carpet treatment thing again. So, I had to deal with the big fan for another couple of days and lack of foam padding under the carpet in my hallway. But, during the couple of days that the carpet was supposed to be drying, it kept getting soaked again. The leak wasn t really fixed. Water was slowly dripping from the water heater. I tried to pinpoint exactly where the leak was coming from, and it looked like someone had essentially just put a bandaid over it, not really repairing anything at all, just putting some duct tape or something over the leak. That s when I started to become suspicious about the quality of the maintenance in the place. Anyways, when the carpet guys came back to put the padding back, they basically just had to redo everything they had done the other day, and I had the fan going for another couple of days. I don t remember if this process happened again one more time or not. I just remember it seemed like I spent a couple of weeks with a wet carpet before the next big problem. Supposedly someone came back to fix the leak again. I don t know if it worked or not, however, because of flood number three.

A month before I was moving out, on a Friday, I came home and saw the van of the carpet guys outside the front of my building. I figured they were there yet again to soak up the water from my carpet. I had to walk past the apartment above mine to get to the stairs that went down to my apartment. As I walked past, I saw a stream of water coming out of the apartment above mine. All of the carpet and foam padding from the apartment was out on the walkway as well. As I walked past the door, I saw that the whole apartment had flooded, and I realized that my apartment was probably also a disaster zone. I walked down and saw a stream of water steadily coming from under my door. I opened the door, and there was an inch or two of water over my entire floor. The paint on the walls was coming off in rivulets. Water was streaming from around the ceiling water sprinklers. In some places on the ceiling, there were bubbles of water-filled paint hanging from the ceiling. If you poked them, water would gush out. I called the management office, but since it was after-hours, they had disappeared for the weekend. I left a message or two, then called my dad to drive down to help out.

I went upstairs to talk to the carpet guys. They were obviously in a hurry to get done, and were obviously disappointed to see me, since they knew I was from the apartment downstairs. They were obviously trying to get out of there before I got home. In their defense, they were outside contractors that the apartment complex had hired, so I understand that they wanted to get out of there They had been called to deal with the apartment above mine, not mine. And there wasn t anyone that actually worked for the apartment complex around. Everyone had apparently already left for the weekend. But, the carpet guys did help me out, staying late and helping me and my dad move all of my furniture out into the lawn, removing all of the carpet and padding, and soaking up as much of the water as they could before moving all of the furniture back in on the concrete slab floor. My dad and I packed as much as we could into our cars, and I spent the night at my parents . Amazingly, my computer had been on and working when I got home, and the only thing that was really damaged was my stereo. So, I was lucky in that sense.

The next morning, I finally got in touch with the management, and my dad and I headed down there. We were told that a water hose for the washer in the apartment above mine had burst sometime in the morning and had sprayed water into the apartment (and consequently, mine) the whole day until we got home. The one good thing about the flood was that it had killed all of the ants that still inhabited the walls. I had found them floating lifeless in the water on my floor. We first talked to one of the women working in the office and one of the maintenance guys. The maintenance guy affirmed that my apartment would be unliveable for a few months, and the woman made sure she made no kind of promise to me about what would happen. She had to wait for her manager to show up, as he was apparently the only one who could deal with me. The manager eventually showed up with HIS boss, also. We all took a look at the apartment and again affirmed that it would be unliveable. They all repeatedly assured me that everything would be taken care of and that I wouldn t have to worry about anything without actually making any promises. They were basically stalling for time, and it was pretty apparent they were doing some number crunching in their heads to see how they could get out of this without losing too much money. As my dad and I packed up some more things, they told me they were going to go figure out what to do, and disappeared for a little while.

My dad and I went to meet again with them shortly after, and the manager s boss was gone. We started the negotiation. To me, it seemed pretty simple: I only had one month left until I was moving, they had open apartments, it was their terrible maintenance that had caused the flood(s) in the first place, so I should be able to move into a new apartment. But, their offer was this: I had mentioned that I had stayed at my parents house the previous night. So, they would allow me to release myself from the terms of my one-year lease without penalty, since I had one month left in it and would obviously have to move out, and move in with my parents. OR, I could move into a new apartment in the complex as long as I signed another year-long lease. I had never mentioned that moving in with my parents was a possibility. I had simply stated that I had stayed over at their house the previous night because my apartment was a swamp. It was not possible for me to move all of my stuff into their house anyways, so that was not an option. And the offer of allowing me to release myself from the terms of my lease without penalty as some kind of positive incentive was insulting. And, since I had already planned to move to NC in a month anyways, and they knew that, I of course could not sign another year lease. I was, I think understandably, angry. I had not only been flooded out of my apartment because of shoddy maintenance of recurring problems, but now I was being bent over, after they had repeatedly assured me they would take care of everything. I had never caused them any problem before. I didn t even complain after all of the problems I had had all year with the apartment. And, my choices from them were essentially give us more money or get out. In the end, I managed to get them to agree to let me move in to another apartment for a month at half the rent. I still felt like I was screwed, but I was so fed up with them, I just wanted to be done with them. Also, the half-month rent reduction came only after I had told them I would move all of my stuff myself. They were concerned that they would have to shell out money for movers as well (the injustice!). Every bit of negotiation had to go up the chain of command. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for helping me out. Every possibility that would save them money, such as me agreeing to move my own stuff, was immediately accepted. Every possibility that might actually help me out, the manager had to call his boss to authorize it. This same boss, who was there a couple of hours ago and had disappeared, was apparently the only one who could actually do anything. Why she couldn t have stuck around to deal with me, instead of us having to call her every fifteen minutes, I don t know. The people I could actually talk to face-to-face wanted it to appear like they were on my side, and it was the mean old faceless (except that I had seen her a couple of hours ago) boss responsible for everything; the old shifting-the-blame routine. Classy.

Before I moved out finally, I went to take a look at my old apartment. The walls were completely covered with mildew. The paint was still hanging off the walls and ceilings. It didn t appear they had done anything with it. They had said they would have to gut the whole apartment. I really hope that is the case, that they completely renovated it, rather than stick a new coat of paint on the walls over the mildew and put some more duct tape over the leaking pipes/hoses/water heaters, or whatever mediocre job they had done.

I don t know if things are the same now, a few years later. But, I certainly won t be renting from AMLI ever again, and will be very wary of other apartment complex chains. The staff at AMLI were very nice when things went well and there weren t any major problems (i.e. when they didn t have to shell out much money). It seemed from talking to them and from reading the newsletters, that they cared for their community. However, when it all hit the fan, and one of their tenants really needed their help, they were unwilling to put their money where their mouth is. To them, what did it matter if they kicked me out on the curb' I mean, I wasn t going to be a source of future revenue. I guess it didn t matter that I had been a source of income for them for the previous eleven months, and had never given them grief before.

And, of course, I never got my deposit back from them

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 05/09/2007
Wow. You have to be really upset to take the time to write all of that. What a shame that they treated him so poorly.

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