I moved into these apartments primarily because they allowed large dogs and I wished to get a large breed dog. I know now I should have instead looked closer at other town homes. I have only been here for a few months but I have had nothing but problems. It all began with a pipe bursting on my hot water heater. That was fixed in a timely manner and all appeared well for a few days. Next I noticed that there appeared to be a gopher in my front yard that was tearing up the "flower" bed we had to clear of debris ourselves when we first moved in. I called the office to put in a maintenance request for the removal of this rodent and no one answered so I left a message with their non-emergency maintenance request line and I have never heard back from them and from what I can tell the rodent is still here.

So far it still didn't seem like that bad of a place to live. But then my dishwasher broke. Apparently they needed to order a part (at least that is what I think the maintenance man wrote to me in his note) for it but it had been nearly three weeks and no one had come to fix it or called to notify me of why they had not remedied the problem so I called the maintenance line again and they told me the guy is busy but he will try and get to it in a few days because the other guy who was working on my apartment took vacation. I am not quite sure why something like ordering a part takes three weeks or as the manager has posted in the response why you would need to call me to come into my apartment to fix something I have already asked you to fix. Now while waiting for them to come fix my dishwasher my laundry room door has fallen off the hinge but I was reticent to call maintenance because it seems to do no good so I took the door down and remounted it myself.

On top of all of the maintenance problems there also appears to be a big insect problem here. Every time we go to take a shower there is always a spider or two waiting for us in the shower. On top of the spiders here we also sit in our living room every night and watch all forms of bugs crawling around our living room from under the front door. This is another maintenance thing that should be an easy fix but I have had no luck with the maintenance department so far so I think I will have to go buy a weather strip for my front door and install it myself.

Finally this last weekend I came home from a weekend visit with my parents and noticed that I had red dots spray painted on the side of my town home. I am not quite sure what these denote as there was no message left for me regarding them on the clip near my door for those kinds of messages. According to the managers response they are there to denote improvements being made but it sure would have been nice to be told why my home got spray painted without my knowledge.

Keep in mind that I have only lived here a few months and have experienced this many problems. Most people don't even experience this high volume of problems in a year of renting here in Lawrence. I would highly suggest that you first look else where, I know I will be when it is time for my contract to be renewed. It is just unfortunate that unless you go with a duplex or a home rental there are very few other places to have large breed dogs in Lawrence.

User Responses
From: peppertree-manager	Date: 09/11/2009
As the Property Manager, I would like address these issues. In regards to the hot water heater, the maintenance staff responded within ten minutes to that call; any water issue is considered an emergency and it is handled immediately. As for the gopher in the front lawn, this is the first I am hearing of the situation. Had I been aware, Critter Control or the like would have been contacted in order to rid the front lawn of such a pest. In light of this, they will be contacted immediately. In regards to the dishwasher, I have attempted to call several times and have never been able to get a hold of anyone. I did mention that one maintenace is on vacation and the other has had water heaters and air conditioners on which to work, but that we would come over for the dishwasher as soon as possible. With a property of 162 units, it is impossible to foresee emergency situations. I have written up a work order for the laundry room door and maintenance will rememdy this when working on the dishwasher. All units are treated quarterly for routine extermination; however, we make it quite clear that if one should have any issues with bugs to please give the office a call and the unit will be treated the very next time the exterminator is on property (once a month). The red markings on the property are for improvements being made, not for termite issues. We are completing some wood replacement and new exterior paint on property throughout the next few weeks. I have expressed my apologies for any miscommunications or misunderstandings and hope that the remainder of the stay will be a pleasant one. I personally live on-site in a townhome and take a lot of pride in the way the property looks and is ran. I encourage and accept critism and try to remedy any unhappiness.
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/14/2009
Personally I'm no fan of Peppertree due to our own experiences there, though we haven't lived there for more than 6 years, but the original complaints seem fairly petty, other than the dishwasher and the bugs. (Our beefs were relatively minor in that they decided to cut off Sunflower Broadband services, so we had no alternative other than buying our own satellite receiver, which we didn't want to do, and when they installed the new furnace in our apartment, the connection wasn't tight enough and we had to call out the gas co. when we smelled gas, which fortunately wasn't at a dangerous level but it was careless nonetheless.) Spiders come because of other bugs, and as a homeowner for the past 6 years who has dealt with spiders aplenty in both the homes we've owned, I can tell you there's not much you can do about them except get rid of the bugs they're coming around to eat. Maybe when you own your own home, you'll realize that these are mostly just annoyances and that it's really, REALLY nice not to have to pay for things like gopher removal, exterminators ($250/year), or dishwasher repairs yourself, even if you have to wait on them to be taken care of, or to have to take time off work to wait for repairmen etc. So enjoy the relative freedom while you can. And there are plenty of rental homes out there that allow large dogs, mostly privately owned ones. Start checking craigslist or the LJW classifieds in early spring for the best availability.
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/14/2009
Yea, the initial complaints are petty except for the fact that we moved in here in July. I can understand through the course of a year certain things happening and going wrong but in two months this many headaches should not show up no matter where you live, and in particular a rental location. As far as owning your own home we are fully looking forward to this experience, then I have no one to look to for maintenance but myself. We also understand the fact that by choosing to own our own home there comes larger expenses for upkeep which is just a fact of owning a home. The sole reason that we currently do not own our own home is that we are/were college students and intend to move back home when we are done with college otherwise we would have taken full advantage of purchasing our own home.

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