From One Bad Place to Another...
From:
dc_mp
Date posted:
8/16/2006
Years at this apartment:
2005
-
2006
My fiancĂ and I moved out of our mother-in-law's home looking for some place a little nicer than hell. Quail Creek was the only place that would approve our credit. The office staff was nice at the beginning, but slowly went downhill. Somehow in the application process they were unable to combine my and my fiancĂ's information so we were required to pay a double-deposit on top of our normal deposit and pet-deposit, all of which totaled to be $850.
When we first moved in, the other apartments around us were vacant so we did not have any problems with noise. It was winter when we moved in so we tried to use our furnace. It would not shut off, so our first month's gas bill was over $200 for a 750 square foot apartment. We requested the maintenance crew to fix the heater but after two visits, they insisted it was working fine! (we resorted to space heaters, blocked off our bedroom, and lived in the dining room in order to keep warm in the winter) During the same time, we asked them to look at our dishwasher. It would fill with water and not drain, it would also make screeching noises and grinding noises. They claimed that it was because we did not run it every day and if we ran it every day, the problems would go away. However, the dishwasher, like the furnace, never repaired itself.
As springtime came around, people began to occupy the apartments around us. This meant that we were now able to hear the loud radio of the new guy down the street as he drove around the parking lot at midnight, the dj in the adjacent apartment warming up his equiptment before every gig, and the couple upstairs having sex. A garage band also lived down the street for two months, and they could be heard across the entire complex.
Within a week of moving in, a woman visiting a friend in the complex left a note on our door (on my birthday, I might add) stating that there was white paint on her supposed damaged PT Cruiser and the neighbors told her it was us. Of course, we had never seen her PT Cruiser in the parking lot until after this note, 3 months later, and never did we see any hint of damage to the car. She was threatening to press chagres, but thankfuly never followed through. Later, our nextdoor neighbor would hide her trash behind our apartment building rather than walk it a block to the dumpster. She also blamed her dog poo on us and complained to the management.
Many stray animals roam the complex and many are bold enough to run into your apartment when you do not notice and urinate on the carpets. Items are frequently stolen out of base-level storage rooms and the police frequent both the town homes and the apartments. From the complex's prime location nestled between Lee's Summit Rd and Phelps, ambulances, fire trucks, and police sirens can be heared at the minimum of two times a day, often up to four times a day.
When we first moved in, the carpets were old and worn. The staff stated that they would replace the carpets because of their bad condition... until they foud out that we had pets. Then they decided to leave the carpet in the apartment. There were former animal stains on the carpet that we did not notice until months into living there. Also, for the first month or so, our cats continued to fish large shards of broken glass out from underneath the kitchen cabinets and stove!
We closed on a house some time in early summer/late spring. We gave the management over 30 days notice. About 60 days before our lease was up, we decided to move our large furniture to our house so we would be able to have time to move and clean the apartment. The assistant manager walked from the office to our apartment and demanded we pay our last month's rent that day (an entire 30 days early) or else, she stated, it would be a breach in our lease contract and we would be reported to creditors. She stated that we were not allowed to remove any of our items from the apartment or else we would be breaking our lease. We called our realator for advice, and she informed us that an apartment group cannot track your movement in and out of the apartment unless you are suspected of drugs. Also, they cannot demand you "pay rent or else" prior to the date the rent is due, as stated in their own rental contract.
We conducted an apartment walk-through on the last day of our lease and have been livig in our house ever since (which I would recommend over an apartment if it is available to you). Seven days after our lease termination, we recieved a letter stating that there were "damages" to the apartment and that our deposit would be appled to it. No itemized list was recieved until 40 days exactly, and even then, they did not state the ammount of our deposit when writing down their figures.
They re charging us for cleaning the carpets (which they turned around and replaced), cleaning the apartment, repainting the bathroom, and replacing the blinds. All of this, supposedly adds up to over $300 that we still owe beyond our deopsit. When we went to the office to ask for the invoices and bills, they produced a bill for the cleaning, stated that the carpet replacement was "thousands of dollars" and we were lucky that we weren't being charged for it, and decided that they needed to tack on some more bills to our statement for paining supplies that they had forgotten to add to the statement before they sent it. The assistant manager then asked if we would like to set up a payment plan. We still had over five days before our alloted time limit was up to decide what we wnted to do about the bill. When we told the asst. manager that we wanted to think about it before we decided, she became very angry and said that we would be hearing from collections!
According to the carpet cleaning bill that they gave us, it totaled over $700 to replace the pad, clean the carpet, replace tack strips, and seams. Then they turned around and supposedly replaced it for "thousands of dollars"! Yet when we priced carpte at Lowe's, at the carpet grade that most apartment complexes choose, it was no more than $0.80 per sq. ft to replace! Also, why are we being asked to pay all this outrageous cash for carpets that were old and decrepit and needed to be replaced in the first place!'
Overall, we were looking for a place that would be better than living at home with an obsessive-compulsive mother-in-law... who knew an apartment could be worse!' On the up-side, if you want to be loud, drunk, and on drugs, you'll probably do fine.
Of the mamangement staff, the only one we encountered that gave us trouble was the asst. manager. Unfortunaely, she seemed to be the only one who would talk with us or deal with us. And, in the defense of the maintenance crew, once upon a time, they were very nice and retrieved our remote control airplane from the top of one of the buildings.
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