Basically, you have only 24 hours to change your mind about your application. After that time, you will either sign a lease...with all of it's small print stipulations to get your money...or your application will cost you the application fee, the security deposit, misc. fees, AND one month of rent, if you are approved! Even if you can not proceed with taking an apartment. And even if you have let them know of this within days of application, but weeks prior to move in date.
Supposedly Clarinbridge does this to mitigate their losses. However our experience was that they had no losses, as they had another renter immediately.
The staff is very rude, the management is greedy, and we were lied to/ deceived often.

User Responses
From: fooledonce	Date: 09/16/2006
The application process was handled by the staff member as "no big deal"..."sign here, sign here". The ability to rent did not factor in to the approval process. Basically, you ARE approved, therefore you will pay. The sheet containing the 24 hours notice and 1 month's rent were on the sheet that was not copied to hand to the applicants to leave with. Only the sheet stating neither of these was copied for the applicants. It's clear as day, that Clarinbridge is trying to slip things past inexperienced, young people, because they can. It would be too decent to point a few things out, wouldn't it? Finally, just because they CAN rip people off does not mean that it's ethical. The apts. losses are not even CLOSE to the amount being expected from the applicants. A rip-off is still a rip-off, even if it's "legal". In speaking to many others that rent elsewhere, no one else has ever heard of such scheme to collect such inflated fees. And the "damages" to justify the 1 month's rent don't exist. Legal...maybe...we are reporting this situation to MANY agencies, including the Consumer Protection Agency...which has started a file on Clarinbridge...the BBB, and many more. There needs to be a reasonable cap on "losses". Currently legal? Possibly. Moral, ethical, and fair...absolutely not! That "some responsibility" you speak of, should be the $455 already at risk. How can that not be enough?! And about the "being informed", each staff member seems to "know" things differently. It would be nice if the staff were nice, and everyone was on the same page!
From: Monkey58	Date: 09/17/2006
If you are old enought to rent an apartment then you are old enough to read a legally binding contract before you sign it. Nobody try to take advantage of you, they probably just assumed that since you were adult enough to be finding your own apartment you didn't need the application read outloud to you. I don't think you understand how the application process works. When you apply for an apartment you are applying to live there, you aren't just turning an application in to see if you'll get approved for the hell of it. You are doing it to live there. If you don't want to or able to--then don't apply. Also, you say the staff was rude, but obviously they were nice enough for you to put in an application in the first place. Now when you don't get your way it must mean that the staff is horrible. I don't think you realize how little they are allowed to do there, if you have problems you should take it to corporate instead of trying to hold hourly employees responsible for making policies and procedures.

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