I am from out of state and therefore had to do my apartment hunting online. The Arbors at Eastland website is VERY deceiving. The website shows nice looking brick building, nice landscape, and fairly nice looking pictures of apartments. I called and made an appointment to have a vieweing of a one bedroom apartment, and they said that they had one available to view....that was on a Thursday. That Saturday I drove down and met with them and much to my suprise they must have "filled" the one bedroom that I would have been able to view in those two days...and therefore showed me a two-bedroom that they said was similar to the one bedrooms, but the one bedroom would simply be smaller. The room they showed me was in a brick building, near the office. I have decided this must be just a "showcase" room, as it was exactly the same room as the pictures on the website...same accent wall painted and everything. Well, all seemed well and I needed an apartment, so I planned on renting with them. When it came time to sign the lease and move in, they made me sign the lease BEFORE viewing the apartment. Afterwards, they showed me the apartment, which was NOT in a brick building...but in a run-down old wood building. The door of the entrance to the building was rusted, the stair looked like they were rotting, and when you walked into the hallway it reeked of mold and smoke. As we proceeded to my new apartment, we ran into a tenant which informed the office worker that her sink pipe was leaking again. When we got to the apartment, there was still a maintenance man there "fixing up and finishing final touches" to the room....even though they had over a month to get it ready. The apartment was disgusting. The walls were dirty, it smelled like something was wrong with the toilet (the room smelled like a septic tank) and was all around very dirty. I wasn't moving in that day, as I hadn't finished packing all of my stuff back home, I was planning on moving in the next weekend, so I headed home. After talking to my parents, we decided that the place did not sound like a very suitable or safe place to live, so I called the management the VERY next day to request not having the apartment. Unfortunately, since I signed the lease (less than 24 hours ago, mind you), I was in a binding contract and they would not let me back out of it without paying 2 months rent. I contemplated it for a while, and decided while this was going to put an extreme financial burden on me, it was the best thing to do. So I called them back and informed them of my decision. What they told me next still angers me.....it wasn't only two months rent, it was in fact THREE months rent. I paid for the first month's rent, but I also have to give two months notice, so therefore I would have to pay THREE months worth of rent for an apartment I had not even moved into, nor had they even gotten it ready to move into. After multiple phone calls with the management and with their mother company, I am out of three months rent. All I can say is renters BEWARE. They are the epitome of a "bait and switch" routine. As a novice renter, I learned my lesson about renting the hard and most expensive way I could. At least I have the comfort in knowing I can warn all of you here, and that I will be smarted in the future when renting to avoid this type of problem.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 12/09/2008
The same thing happen to me when I rented I was moving in and at the last minute they change my apartment to which I had already had cable and internet and the electric switch over to.

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