My spouse and I moved into this apartment complex in the fall of 2008. We were moving from southeast Columbus where the rent is about $200 cheaper for a 2 bedroom, but we figured that the better area and closer work conditions justified a $200 rent price increase. We were very wrong.

When we visited and walked through with one of the leasing agents, we were initially impressed with the seemingly high quality of everything. The tennis courts, pool, racquetball court, were all an upgrade from our previous community. They went on and on about the "millions" in renovations to the clubhouse. It all seemed pretty good on the surface. It wasn't until we had lived there for a while before we realized what the truth was.

The clubhouse: Yes, the upstairs may look pretty nice, and maybe it is. We haven't spent 5 minutes in there since we moved in. There's no reason to go there unless you are dropping off rent.

The workout room/fitness area. It looks nice if you walk through it. In reality, there is only ONE elliptical machine, which is often in use. Out of 3 treadmills that I remember, only one is really worth using, the others are in poor condition. Of the free weights, more than half are usually missing, I suspect due to theft from the residents. The weight room is almost always dirty and has things thrown around. I have no idea if it is ever cleaned or organized, but its a sad excuse for a high quality weight room.

The racquetball court is a nice touch, however, it was ruined by some kind of "flood" when we first moved in, making it unusable for about 2 months. Even with a new floor, it is extremely dusty all the time.

The tennis courts. I enjoy having these, and use them as much as I can. however, the courts are cracked, and the nets are falling down and have holes in them. It's not as though you can't use them, but they are in very poor condition.


Moving on to the actual apartment and living conditions.

We knew going into it that these were old apartments. They are at least 20 years old, if not older. The appliance are old. The cabinets are old. Everything is pretty used and somewhat run down.

Our main problems started that fall when our air conditioning broke down almost immediately. to their credit, Saw Mill replaced the unit with a new one. Problem solved right' Not quite, we'll get to that later.

During the winter, we had frequent problems with our hot water and consequently the heating. It would go out on numerous occasions, and maintenance was never very quick to fix it, presumably because there were so many other problems with other people's heating, etc. We even had a week long stretch with no hot water. This is in the dead of winter remind you. Eventually they replaced our hot water unit entirely, and even then we still had constant problems.

Our particular unit, and I assume all the others, is extremely inefficient. Our average gas bill during the winter was over $100. Our average water bill is $50. We did our best to seal the apartment using caulk and plastic over the windows, but even that didn't help much. At times you could feel the cold air blowing in through the cracks in the doors, windows, sliding glass doors, etc. It was very frustrating to know that you couldn't do much to keep the cold out.

We also had problems with our pipes freezing frequently during the winter. This never happened once at our old apartment, which was also in Columbus.

Towards the end of spring and the beginning of summer, we turned our air conditioning on when it would get warm outside. That began a month long situation where our air conditioning broke down about 10 times in that month. The Saw Mill Village office repeatedly would send someone out to "fix" the problem, tell me it was fixed, only to have it break down the next day. Keep in mind this is a new AC unit that was not even used at all prior to this. Eventually I told them they needed to give me some money back from my rent, and they did, only after I had to spend a long time on the phone with several people.

Currently, right now in fact, we have some light flooding happening in our dining room coming from the air conditioning. This is the 2nd time it's happened. It just amazes me how much things break down here.

The parking situation is one of the most frustrating for us. Supposedly every unit is allowed to park 2 cars, and is given a sticker to display on the window. Any car without a sticker should supposedly be towed (which is a $150 fine btw). I don't know exactly what the problem is, but there is almost NEVER any available parking. If you try to park after about 7pm, you will usually have to walk about 5-10 minutes as the only available parking will be on the other side of the apartments. My guess is that there are a lot of people with more cars than they should have, or that the apartment complex is just lazy about towing or that they give out too many stickers. Regardless, there are far too many cars, not enough parking for the people that have paid for stickers. Another strange occurrence is that there is always a lot of broken glass around the parking lot. I'm not sure if this is just parties and teens breaking bottles, or people's windows being broken into, but it is troubling.

Guests are supposed to park along the trees, instead of in front of the apartments. There are probably 10 guest parking spots that are even close to us, and of those, about 5 of them are constantly being used every night by dump trucks, delivery vans, etc. I have no idea why these people aren't towed, but if you have guests staying with you, good luck trying to find a place for them to park if you don't want them to get towed.

I'm sure I have forgotten about a lot of little things, these are most of the major things, and I wish I had written everything down as it was happening, but I figured the least that I could do would be to warn a few people about this place.

It will appear to be a good deal. IT IS NOT. There are apartment communities very close by that are brand new, with almost the same price of rent. I urge you to check those out before living here.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/27/2009
I completely agree with you.... cuz we had nightmares staying there and move out was a tormenting experience....due to the '(in)Efficient' staff there....costed us ruining of our credit history.... Beware of Sawmill village apartments.....
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/29/2009
I would be upset too if things went wrong in my apartment however I have been here longer than you and never had any issues. As for the parking I never have an issue, even when I come home past midnight. You must have not gotten the heads up about the pipes freezing because before winter arrived I had a letter on my door and so did my neighbors from the office stating how to avoid that situation. I talk to my neighbors all of the time and none of them have any issues like you mentioned.
From: Anonymous	Date: 08/30/2009
You must park near the front office. That's the only side with ANY parking at all. Otherwise you're obviously a staff member trying to make this review look less credible. I have no problem with the neighbors for the record. The pipes freezing is in no way our fault. We did what they said to do and it still happened, even after they fixed it several times.

Your thoughts? Post a response to this review. Display my response: with my username anonymously Responses appear below reviews and one response per user is permitted.

   Free estimates on moving trucks      Find apartment share/roommates