What Were We Thinking'!
From:
-Anonymous-
Date posted:
8/31/2007
Years at this apartment:
2004
-
2005
When my spouse and I first moved to Austin, we must have been the MOST naive people in the world. Neither one of us had ever had our own place, so we didn't really know where to begin. We found Bainbridge Villas in one of those apartment magazines. We thought, "Oh wow, what a great deal! $699 All bills included and free cable, for a two bedroom' It's too good to be true!" IT WAS.
The fact that they did not let us see the apartment before we signed our lease should have been enough warning. Sure, the model apartment looks great, but you just wait... when you unlock the door for the very first time and you see the black mold in the vents and the windows, and even in the kitchen cabinets! And let's not forget the long hairs and dead bugs that had been painted over in the bathroom cabinets. It didn't take us long to realize that we were in way over our heads.
We would come home to a flooded hallway because the A/C would always break. The walls were seriously paper thin, so we could hear everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, that our neighbors were up to. Anywhere from crazy loud Tejano music at 7:00AM EVERY morning, to the neighbor yelling at her kids while they were taking a bath, to you know what. We could tell that the very foundation of the apartment building was questionable. When people would come to our neighbor's door and pound on it (I do mean pound, it's not a friendly neighborhood by any means)- our WHOLE apartment would shake. Did I mention that this place is so very noisy'
Let me proceed. We knew a couple who went through a huge ordeal with the plumbing in their kitchen. The pipes under their kitchen sink literally fell apart, allowing the neighbor's food from the garbage disposal to come in under their sink. We knew another girl whose child was constantly having to go to the hospital due to allergy problems because of the mold overgrowth.
When they say "all bills included" they forget to tell you that you share your water supply with your neighbor. A hot shower was a rare occasion indeed! They place these little metal things in your thermostat so that you can't crank up the A/C too high, as this would be more expensive for them. You can only have one system running at a time, your A/C or your heater. I'm serious. Either your A/C can be turned on, OR your heater. This goes for the whole complex. When the weather became chilly, they turned on the heat. However, after December it got hot and stayed hot. The office insisted that they could not turn the A/C back on for the tenants until "corporate" gave them permission. As a result, temperatures inside our apartment as well as our fellow tenants would exceed 80 degrees fahrenheit! This went on for weeks and weeks.
Finally, as for the customer service, I have to say that it was definitely lacking. As for maintenance, it seemed like things that were repaired did not stay repaired, i.e. the A/C. If I had to bet the farm, I would bet that the manager or someone from the Bainbridge staff wrote the "Excellent Place to Live" review. Please. Save yourself the trouble and find a place that you will actually feel safe and be proud to call home.
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