My fiance lived here for three years, and while it seemed like a nice place at first, the apartment complex, its tenants, and the management took some major turns for the worse.

The apartment itself wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. The appliances were almost older than me (think gold-colored, early 80's), the blinds were old, dry-rotted, and brittle, and the tub leaked into the apartment downstairs at one point. The carpet as well as the rest of the apartment fixtures were definitely showing their age.

Parking wasn't bad at first, but as the complex began taking a downward turn tenant-wise, it became a problem. You would frequently see cars, functioning and not, sitting in the prime parking spaces, unmoved for weeks.

Aside from the parking issues, other tenants would drag race through the parking lot at all hours of the night, as well as leave their food trash laying around the property. The icing on the cake was when, on two occasions, other tenants took their cars through the grass and were doing donuts between trees in the yard right behind the apartment!!

So when my fiance and I finally bought a house to get away from all the noise and mess, we thought that the experience there was fairly decent, with no complaints other than what I wrote above. Well, then it was time for the bills to roll in. We received a bill for nearly $400 for cleaning and "damages" that were done to the apartment over the last three years! Mind you, neither she nor I had ever been billed a dime by any of the other rental companies we dealt with in the past.

Some things we were charged for make sense. My fiance has a cat, cats can do a number on the carpet - we'll pay for that one. Some painting had to be done. Sure, no problem, we'll pay for it. However, we were charged for a slew of things that were considered "above and beyond normal wear and tear."

For instance:

The maintenance men re-grouted the tub twice after it leaked on our neighbor, but never sealed the grout. Subsequently, mildew grew on the grout constantly. No amount of bleach or mildew cleaner could ever stave it off for more than a week or so. Well, we were charged for cleaning the shower and tub regardless of the fact that it was cleaned constantly, and it was not our fault that the grout was not sealed. Guess what' Mildew spreads, especially when the apartment is vacated over a month before the lease ends, so were were charged even more. The bathroom cost us $50.

We were charged for light bulbs, but you didn't see me sending the rental company an invoice when I had to replace a bulb in the common laundry area that was out for more than a week.

We were charged $20 for the removal of shelf paper in the kitchen, which was in place when my fiance moved in!

The most ridiculous charge was for the broken blinds. The two windows in the apartment faced due east and due west. They were probably about 10 years old, and extremely brittle to begin with. You can imagine what an additional 3 years of sun can do. So, we were charged to replace the blinds because one third of ONE SLAT snapped off while I was closing the blinds one evening. So, we essentially bought the rental company a new set of blinds to replace the old set that should have been switched out years ago. Now that's what I call service!

The list went on and on...

When my fiance called regarding this list, she was treated in a very cool and rude manner by the property manager. She repeatedly told, "Sorry, it wasn't clean enough" over and over. In fact, my fiance was told that "if she had left a full month's rent as a deposit, she would have gotten some money back." Now there's basic math for you.

They wouldn't budge on a single charge.

So, we sure learned our lesson.

Apparently, we should have ignored a lot of things.

Never mind the washing machine being broken for over a week, or common area light bulbs that I had to replace over the years. Just ignore the spiders and silverfish running through the apartment. Forget about the noisy neighbors drag racing through the parking lot (sometimes in reverse with their lights off!!) and doing donuts between the trees who were never evicted. Don't worry about the people who mounted a satellite dish in a bucket of cement outside their front window - it adds class to the neighborhood. Oh, and definitely don't mind the maintenance man that left my fiance's apartment door open and unlocked through the entire weekend when we were out of town, exposing all of her belongings to whoever might want them, and allowing her indoor cat to roam freely through the building.

Yep, we should ignore all of those things as tenants, but uh...it'll be $20 for the blinds.

User Responses
From: 0011223344	Date: 02/27/2007
I also got a $422 bill after moving out of here for supposedly having to replace the counters. I have NEVER had to lose a deposit for not cleaning properly and refused to pay them - they actually put me into collections for it! I cannot believe the audacity of these people!

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