Move in day at College Park has a very party atmosphere. This is to distract you from the fact that you will be standing in line for an hour or more while they process your parking pass paperwork and give you the (more than likely wrong) keys to your apartment.

They will also give you a move-in checklist and make a big deal that if you bring it back by the end of the day they will give you a box of free promotional items. Ignore this pressure tactic and take your time. Go over your apartment very carefully. Note every bit of badly patched drywall, every dent in the appliances, every stain on the carpet, every hole in the upholstery. Attach as many extra sheets as you need. Take a week shaking everything down. Make Copies. Get them to read, sign, and date every page of the copies you are keeping to that effect.

Keep in mind that just about every employee, handiman, contract laborer, passer-by, visiting dignitary, secret society member, and all of their pets have access to the keys to at least your front door and probably the key to your individual room. Don't assume it's safe to walk from the shower to your room naked. Don't assume that it's your roommates in the living room watching TV, so you don't need to be fully clothed. Don't assume that if you can't find something that you simply lost it or that one of your roommates took it.

Check in with the office about any odd charges to your account. A story for you:
I had two vanity lightbulbs burn out in the bathroom. I went to Walmart, bought some replacements for $3, replaced them, went about my life. End of the month comes, I pay my rent, a couple days later I get something in my mailbox (but not actually mailed, mind you) telling me I underpaid by $9, thus my rent was considered late, thus I owed then $38 dollars ($29 late fee).
When I checked it out I was told the $9 was because I had put in a work order (I hadn't) to have someone come out to replace the lightbulbs (They didn't).
I asked them to show me the work order. They pulled up the apartment record on the computer and, it turns out, I had apparently filed 18 (!) work orders for a variety of repairs in the previous 6 months. My various roommates also seemed to have the same habit. None of us had requested anything. None of us could recall having ever seen any of the supposedly requested work being done. Right about the time I pointed out this was a bit *ODD* they decided that I wouldn't have to pay, and oh, can we credit your account for the cost of the lightbulbs'

You can and will be moved at CollegePark's convenience. It does not matter if you will have to pay around $100 to get phone/utilities/cable/etc cancelled or transferred. It does not matter if you've redecorated or made improvements to your current apartment during the 8 months that you've been living there. No, you may not cancel your lease, you must move to another of their apartments. What' You dare ask why you have to move' We're not making enough money with only two of you living there. Give you more roommates' Well, yeah, we could have done that, but we screwed up and didn't put your profile information in the folder new residents look through, ooopsie! You have one week, be out by 2pm.
You find some new people to move in with, but, inexplicably, College Park won't give you keys to your new place until you move out of the old one. The week passes, the office opens at 10am and you finally get your keys and start moving your stuff into your new apartment. You come back for another load of stuff around noon to find your apartment is full of painters using your electricity to power their paint guns and high powered light arrays. You locked the door, didn't you' They said you had until 2pm! Hey! You're getting paint all over my stuff! Ooops, so sorry.

Beware the student employees. They travel in groups. They like to knock on your door in the evening to see what you're doing.

Oh, cast aside any hopes you may have had of sleeping on the weekends during Football season. Sure, you may tell yourself that you can just by earplugs, but how are you going to be able to sleep with the flickering light from the bonfire the other residents have built around one of the trees in the courtyard' (I have video of one of the times this happened, btw. I especially like the part where the cops and firemen were posing for pictures with various residents.) Don't be surprised to discover that your building (and probably your car if you managed to get a good parking space) has been shot up with bright orange paintballs.

If you move out early don't let the friendly agreeable nature of whomever you talk to fool you. When they smile and say okay when you turn in your keys dont be confused and think that means your lease has finished. Every months your former roommates will find a nifty letter addressed to you with a not particularly slowly increasing amount reflecting your unpaid rent and compounding late fees. They'll find this in their mailbox, but it won't actually be mailed.... so filing that change of address form with the USPO won't do anything but help you to keep getting that junk mail from whomever College Park sold your address to. The first you'll probably hear about it is after the tax cycle is over, they've written if off, and have sold your debt to a collection agency.

Suppose, instead, you stay on to the end of your lease. Hell maybe you even resigned because they promise you a cool free gift! (I'd forgotten about that until now. No, I didn't ever get my cool free gift!). But, no, you stay on 'til the end of your lease. Pay each month and finally move out. A couple months later you'll get your Statement of Deposit. In short it will say "No, you don't get your deposit back. In fact, you screwed up the apartment so much you owe us. Here's a list of what we had to fix." Go dig up your Move-In Checklist. Note the similarities. Tell College Park to bugger off.
Go talk to your previous roommates. Discover they were billed for the exact same things when they moved out a year ago. Discover they we silly enough to pay to have those things repaired. Muse on the fact that the repairs never occurred. Think back to all those work orders made in your name. Laugh bitterly.

Start obsessively checking your credit history. Consider hiring a lawyer. Wonder about how one goes about filing a class action lawsuit. Wonder how much CollegeParkSucks.com would cost. Decide the bandwidth bills would be prohibitive- ----- on an existing website instead.

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