I moved into Oak Forest August 08. This was my first time leasing an apartment, and it was a horrible experience. FIRST IM NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP, NOBODY CAN EVER BELIEVE ME WHEN I TELL THEM ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE. First i moved into a filty,dirty apartment that had not been cleaned since the last tenants moved. The carpet was dirty, blinds was worn and had started to turn brown. It was mold around the tub, tile was peeling on the bathroom floor. Bulbs in the bathroom were out, and to top it off it was just an awful smell throughout entire apartment. The microwave was broken. I discovered all this the first day of my move in. I went straight to the leasing office, and they tried to make it seem like i was a liar. The staff is o.k. The leasing agents are very friendly, its just the Manager, and that assistant manager is just god-awful. Nothing i described above has yet to be fixed in my apartment and here it is April09. Im glad i only signed a nine month lease and will be gone next month. But this is just the beginning of my problems here. They charged me for electricity for a whole month, when i had the bill from TXU during the time in question and confirmation of my payments. They charged my about 200. SO i paid 2 electric bills in one month for the same month..one to txu and one to Oak Forest. But wait there is more.After hearing noises in the vents for a few months,i later wake up in the middle of the night to get a drink in the dark and my foot brushes a rat. When i went to the god-awful assistant mgr, she tried to turn it around as if the rat came from my apartment being dirty. I was so offended. Why in the hell would i complain about a rat if i knew my apartment was filty.The rat could of came from a few things:1. the fact that i moved into the apartment that hadnt been sprayed or cleaned,2.the fact you have to sit your trash outside in the morning(its trash sitting all around the complex anytime of the day)3.the fact i lived on the first floor and the dryer vent cap was missing. She tried to make it seem like it was impossible for a rat to be in my apartment unless its unclean. I found that funny considering that when i first toured the complex with one of the leasing agents, it was a dead rat by the pool. I know for a fact the leasing agent saw it, but didnt adknowledge because that wouldnt have looked good if you showing someone an apartment.After i told them about the rat, they told me it would be TWO weeks before someone could come spray. This is the same month where they charged me for electricity. So i paid two electric bills,plus rent and water,and lived with rats that month. I remind you, I moved into Oakforest in Aug. here it is april, and do you think anything i mentioned above was fixed in my apartment''' NO, i had to go get my parents steamer to clean my carpet, i had someone to come in and re-plaster around the bathtub...i still have brown blinds and a broken microwave. I have tried to reach out to the manager about this, but she has not return none of my 13calls.(Ive left more than 13messages on her voicemail..i just stopped counting at 13). She has not returned my numerous emails either. I have stopped by the office and they say things like she is in the back,or she's busy. Or they will say "oh she is about to leave". not "oh she is gone" but about to leave''''So much for customer service. Im so glad i only signed a nine month and will be gone next month. If i had to stay any longer i might would have ended up mopping the office floor with the assistant managers face. She crossed the line with me on a personal level more than once, and i let her make it those times. PLEASE EXPLORE ALL OPTIONS BEFORE CHOOSING OAK FOREST.

User Responses
From: notbuyingit2	Date: 04/10/2009
Chiming in... I moved out in February 2009 after nearly 7 years. It says a lot about any apartment complex when a person will stay that long, or even longer (as the person below has been there for a whopping 14 years). When I moved into the complex in May 2002, the apartments were clean, the grounds were clean, the gates worked, and the office staff was nice and helpful. Sadly, none of these things were the case when I left. I lived in three apartments in Oak Forest. The last one I moved into in December 2007. The shower in the master bathroom had blue cleanser on the tiles and a broken drain plug which was never fixed (they gave me a rubber stopper), the sink in the guest bathroom had big cracks in it which had been spray painted over with white paint and the tub had a drain cap that wouldn't stay closed, there was grease with an inch of dust over it on the kitchen cabinets, and somehow wasps kept getting into the second bedroom (though I never could figure out if they were coming through a crack in the window or through the vent - called maintainence twice and I don't think the did anything but come over and look at the blinds). And the apartment STANK. I initially thought it was the carpet (which was actually new if you can believe that), but it ended up being the garbage disposal. I had to buy special cleaning packs to stick down there to clean it out and finally managed to get rid of the smell after several cleanings. I don't think I'd been there a month before my downstairs neighbor came up to ask me if I was running my washer because she heard water running down the wall into her apartment. She told me that she'd been having problems with that and had put in several requests to the office to fix the problem. Their solution was to give her paint to cover the spot where the water had run down the wall and made the paint bubble up on the wall. I had to call and report that water was leaking from my upstairs neighbors washer down into my apartment. They came while I was at work to look at it and said there was no problem with the plumbing, so I guess I imagined the water that was dripping from the ceiling and pooling on top of my washer. And do you know that when I moved out, these s.o.b's had the nerve to charge ME for water damage done the apartment below the one I vacated? There was obviously a pre-existing problem with the pipes leaking and not working properly (though both the manager and the maintainence manager both vehemently denied this and the maintainence requests that had been submitted by myself and my downstairs neighbor which could've shown there was a problem with the plumbing conveniently couldn't be located). When the movers disconnected my washer, I did notice that there was slow drip (very slow) and after we were unsuccessful at shutting it completely off, I called and left a message on the maintainence line. Didn't leave it on the emergency maintainence line because that says 'don't leave a message here unless you're sitting in a burning hot apartment in summer, or a freezing apartment in winter, yadda, yadda, yadda...". Call me overly optimistic, but a slow drip didn't seem like an emergency to me. Obviously it was, as they charged me 125 dollars for 'damages'. B.S. Supposedly, had I called the emergency line they wouldn't have charged me anything. I don't understand this logic because they told me my former downstairs neighbor called the emergency line and they came right out. Soooooo, what difference does it make who called the emergency line as long as the issue was addressed? An issue that didn't even have to be an issue had they bothered to do anything the other times it was reported. Secondly, they ripped me off from another 75 dollars for a gate clicker they claimed I didn't turn in. (ha! a gate clicker for a flipping gate -the one off Southwest- that was never closed) I DID turn the gate clicker in after it stopped working and received another gate card (though I didn't need it because as I said, the freakin' gate was never closed). If they could keep the same office personnel for more than say, THREE MONTHS, maybe they could properly train them. When I turned in my broken gate clicker, the guy I gave it to (a bald, muscular Puerto Rican guy) took it and tossed it in his desk drawer. Then this brilliant individual took my file and added the extra gate card he gave me to replace the clicker, but he didn't have enough sense to remove the clicker!!! BUT since they had my signature on the THIRD PAGE of the inventory addendum (WHERE THE INVENTORY IS LISTED ON THE SECOND PAGE... hmm, wonder how hard it would be to change out that second page folks?), they were correct and I was wrong. "You signed for it, so it's true." If you don't smell something foul you might want to get yourself checked. So basically they ripped me off from my whole deposit. The apartment was clean so they couldn't get anything that way. And that little bee-yotch of a manager (or at least that's who she claimed to be)... when I tell you it took everything in me not to slap the ---- out of her, I am not lying. First of all, she couldn't even take 2 seconds to look at the name on my file so she could actually address me by name and at least pretend like she cared who she was talking to. Kept calling me 'ma'am' in a very obnoxious tone and finally stopped when I told her to address me by name. Seven years living in this complex, and this was the best they could do. Please do yourself a favor and RUN, don't walk, in the other direction of Oak Forest. It's no longer a great place to live. The staff is rude, indifferent, and incompetent, there's dog crap EVERYWHERE, the quality of tenants has gone way down, the gates don't work, the apartments are falling apart, and you will get ripped off in the end.
From: Anonymous	Date: 04/19/2009
You all DO realize RENTERS RIGHTS don't you? Check it out and maybe you would realize you would've been able to move out after the first few weeks living here..
From: Anonymous	Date: 04/24/2009
Sadly, nothing you say (Please Read Before You Consider Oak Forest) surprises me. When my lease is out, so am I. To show that I just don't have an axe to grind, please see my post of 10/23/07 under "Satisfied" when I detailed how Oak Forest met all of my needs... that is with the former regime. I have been here 14 years, with the last being by far the worst. Unreasonable staff, poor customer service, no idea what discretion means.

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