Apartments are very plain, everything white. All woodwork is dripping with glue. You will not get your deposit back even if it's spotless. They charge you automatic fees for painting and carpet when you move out. Told us pets were allowed, and then had to give away dog. Charged us $400 because the lock on our door broke. Called me constantly saying that people were complaining about noise, even though I was at work or at school most of the time and never had more than two friends over, therefore I knocked on all my neighboors doors and found out no one complained about me.

User Responses
From: mad786163	Date: 12/13/2006
I agree!!! Northbrook staff is only concerned about getting your money. They are rude, uncooperative, and unorganized. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing! I lived across the street in another CIP apartment, Northridge, for 2 years and never once had a problem. The staff there was great and the apartment was like new. However, I outgrew the Northridge apartment and moved over to Northbrook for the large 3 bedroom floorplan expecting to have the same great experience. Boy was I wrong! We had problems starting before we even moved in! When we were shown the apartment they told us that their monthly special was 1 month of rent free. Then when we went back someone else said that they had made a mistake and this special wasn't currently being offered. Finally, when we signed our applications they changed their story again and told us the special was indeed being offered. I would have asked for 1 YEAR for free if I knew what was to come! Apparently some college kids lived in our apartment before us and neither they, nor Northbrook felt the need to clean it or fix problemed areas before new tenants (ie. ME) moved in. I was extremely upset as I had spent a considerable amount of time cleaning my old apartment at Northridge to the point that it looked like it did on the day I originally moved in. Nothing was broken and everything was sparkling clean! At Northridge there was a 1/2 smoken cigar on the deck, broken dishwasher, broken stove drawer, broken window sill, torn linolium, horribly stained carpets, and 2 inch gaps in the carpet padding that ran the length of the living room and in 2 bedrooms. You could sprain your ankle falling in those holes! When we reported this to Northbrook upon moving in they seemed less than concerned and only came to clean the stained carpets after I practically screamed at them for a week! Apparently the carpet padding separating is "normal" and not their problem....Pretty sure I haven't lived anywhere else where I have gaps in the floor! If that wasn't bad enough, they have applied MY rent check to another apartment not once, but twice in 5 months. After talking/arguing with 3 different Northbrook managers, saying "Yes I did pay my rent. You have already cashed the check!!" for over a week (in which I had to make ALL the phone calls to get the situation straightened out and they did not return even ONE!) Needless to say, I am extremely fed up and have zero patience left. As soon as my lease is up and I can find a better option, I'm out of there!
From: Follow-Up	Date: 09/21/2007
Follow-up from mad786163: It has been 9 months since I made my original ranting post about Northbrook and unfortunately little has changed or improved. We have had 3 more major issues with them since my first post. The first being that they messed up our rent for the THIRD time. I came home one night this summer to a letter stating that not only did I have a late fee on my account, but that I also had underpaid them. I left a nasty message on the manager's voicemail stating that I expected a return phone call first thing the next morning. As usual, she didn't return my call the next day and I had to call her to straighten out another one of their mistakes. The manager told me that not only did she think I had underpaid CIP that month, but that I had been underpaying them for the entire 6 months that had passed since we signed the lease. I questioned why it would take them 6 months to figure this out and also questioned their organization and mentioned a general lack of competance from any of their staff. She claimed that they had been making up for our "underpayment" for the past 6 months by dipping into our credit of 1 free month of rent. (This credit was to be split up evenly and used throughout our 12 month lease.) She claimed that after 6 months our credit had been entirely used up and we still owed a balance. I continued arguing with her for a good 1/2 hour insisting that they had made a huge mistake. Eventually she put me on hold to "pull out and look at" my lease. When she got on the phone she very rudely said, "It says right here that your rent is XXXX per month. (About $100 more than we had been paying the entire time we lived there.) She offered to let me go in & view the contract for myself & I was more than willingly to take her up on her offer. This is when my roommate stepped in & agreed to go look at the lease. We both figure that at this point it is best if I do not physically walk into the managers office because it good very easily end up in my arrest! When my roommate went in, the manager didn't so much as pull the lease out and said "Oh, I see the problem. We gave you the apartment for less than we should have." Well guess what...too bad! This is your mistake & the lease that YOU created and I signed is LEGALLY BINDING. Obviously this idiot never pulled out the contract when she was on the phone with me originally and completely lied to me about what my rent was without doing any investigation. Needless to say, we are still continuing to pay the same amount of rent we have paid all along and CIP had to reimburse all of the rent special we had on credit that they had be wrongfully using. Next, I came home another day to find another handicap stall painted in front of our building. Keep in mind there are maybe 6 stalls infront of quite a large building and now 2 of them were handicap. I was less than pleased but wasn't going to pursue the issue knowing how cooperative (or rather UNcooperative) the management at Northbrook had been to date. However, after a few days of annoyance my roommate mentioned this new handicap stall to our manager and she acted as if she didn't even know that a new stall had been painted with the handicap logo. In fact, she told my roommate that the maintence guys were only supposed to repaint the EXISTING stall, not create a new one & she would have them fix it. The manager also told us to "not worry about it" and that we could "park in the newly painted stall still becuase it's not really supposed to even be there." She told us that she had talked to the police dept and if there is not an actual handicap sign posted above a stall (which there isn't), the stall is not considered handicap and you can't be ticketed. So for about a week, we parked in this stall as directed by the manager only for me to come out one morning to find a parking ticket on my windshield. This parking ticket was for $100 for parking in a "handicap" stall. I called the police department and explained the situation to them and was told I had to physically appear in the city attorney's office and dispute the ticket. That morning I went to the management office and made then write a letter to the city attorney explaining the entire situation and that where I was parked was a. not a handicap stall and b. that the apartment managers had indeed given permission to residents to park there. Then, I spent my entire lunch hour some of that afternoon sitting in the city attorney's office listening to some white trash lady argue about getting a ticket for not having a license plate on her car. Are you kidding me?!! When I was finally able to meet with the city attorney I explained the entire situation to him, handed him the letter, and waited for him to get rid of my ticket. Instead, he looks at me like I'm a complete moron and asks if there is a sign above the stall. I said "No, there is a sign above the REAL handicap stall that is NEXT to this one. This stall is NOT handicap. Read the letter from my apartment." To which he responded, "Well your apartment can't just pick and choose what is handicap or not. Are you sure there isn't a handicap sign above this stall? If there isn't the police can't write you a ticket." I was about to loose it. "Exactly! That is why I'm here." Eventually the ticket was dismissed but not after me wasting much of my own time trying to explain the stupidity brought on by my apartment. And finally, we now have a mouse problem. Yes, I know that everyone has a mouse at some point, but we have had 4 in the past 2 months. I promise, promise, promise, that my house is clean so we aren't "attracting" or "inviting" these mice. The apartment acts like it is no big deal but I can assure you that if the 40-something year old lady that works in our apartment office had mice in her apt, the matter would be much more urgent and taken care of. I'm 1/2 tempted to set "no-kill" traps and drop them off at her doorstep. It would be interesting to see how much of a priority it would be for her then. My roommate has demand they send an exterminator over AGAIN and not only get rid of the mice, but find out where in the hell they are coming from to begin with! I'm having visions of waking up to a mice nibbling my nose off. Counting the days until Feb 1st when our lease is up!!

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