Sunday, December 28, 2003

PLEEEAAAASE PAY ATTENTION TO THESE REVIEWS, FOLKS. WE IGNORED THEM AND NOW WE?RE PAYING DEARLY.

I want to stress that I am not a person who likes to cause a fuss or speak negatively in general. But I would feel even worse if someone else got sucked into this pit, so I will leave our experiences with you.

ISSUES

1)SUB-PAR CONSTRUCTION

At first glance, everything looks white and new.... appliances, linoleum, paint, carpets.... I mean, it is a 1960s building, but with the renovations, it looked kind of cool.

HOWEVER--

Our closet door, which is an inch too short for the frame, immediately fell off its hinges.

Look closely and you will see that NOTHING is caulked. The toilets, the bathtub, spaces behind the stove and refrigerator (where ROACHES enter from other units)-- WIDE OPEN. I?m talking holes that took about 45 minutes to fill with hardening foam. Why was I filling up holes all over the place with foam' I will get to that later on. But you can probably guess.

No caulk around the plumbing fixtures' No wonder they have problems with water leakage. Big ones.

After a few months in our apartment we discovered a problem with water leakage and cracks forming in the plaster. We saw where half-assed repairs had been made cover up old water damage. The holes in the roofs actually CAUSING the damage were apparently never fixed because they still drip through.

Because of our ROACH PROBLEM we tried to caulk the hole in the drywall behind our stove. We discovered that the drywall was so rotten that we couldn?t even run a bead of caulk around it, which is a simple and unintrusive task.

Hey, why the hell did WE have to do that anyway' Shouldn?t they have done this before we moved in' YES!

The people below us had a worse water leakage problem than we did -that was never fixed- and moved out early on.

This has apparently rotted a hole through their floor to the ceiling of the laundry room beneath them. I have witnessed what looks and smells like raw sewage backing up through a drain in the laundry room floor on rainy nights. Water leakage, structural damage, sewage-- this is important because all these things lead to....

2) ROACHES, ROACHES, ROACHES..... **ROACHES**

Actuallly, this is why I broke down and wrote in. I just came from the laundry room, where I caught THREE roaches trying to crawl into my basket full of warm, newly washed clothes. I?d only been down there for three minutes. That was IT.

I know a few can be expected in an apartment building. I can accept killing one or two occasionally.

But this is RIDICULOUS. When we first moved in, I noticed little imperfections in the NEW linoleum that resembled pellets of black pepper. Curiously, they washed away each month but kept coming back, no matter how much I tried to sweep and mop them away.

I later found out that this was ROACH CRAP. LOTS OF IT. Mind you, this is tame compared to what the problem has progressed to over the last six months.

I?m a housewife. I clean my kitchen, inside and out, once a month (in addition to daily upkeep-type cleaning). I have never attracted any kind of bug infestation in my life. I discovered a HARBORAGE that had built up behind my mini-fridge in the kitchen. They?d found the motor. I usually go back there expecting only dust. What I saw looked like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After stifling my gag reflex and crying a lot, I killed the 70-80 roaches I found and cleaned up the ROACH HARBORAGE that formed behind my mini-fridge in the course of a month.

I discovered that the "newly renovated" kitchen bar was hollow, and the roaches had been entering from **inside** the kitchen bar.

To give you an idea about how ---- we?ve HAD to get about this roach problem, this is what we do. It takes up a LOT of our free time and sucks, but it?s either this is deal with roaches skittering all over EVERYTHING at all hours of the day and night--

A visit from the exterminator where they SUPPOSEDLY treated the whole building.... taking our trash UP THE HILL TO THE DUMPSTER (can you say INCONVENIENT') every single night before bed..... washing dishes immediately and running the washer every night....keeping things such as clothing in plastic, air-tight bins and tossing ALL unneccessary paper and cardboard.... wiping the sinks and tub dry when we?re done with them.... caulking everything and plugging up all the HOLES we?ve been finding in this dump with hardening foam, and then spreading boric acid under the stove and fridge.... measures that took a great deal of time and money on both our behalves.

We?ve been doing this for a month straight, AND DO YOU KNOW WE STILL KILL TWO OR THREE ROACHES A ***DAY'*** I have to get the bug man to come back this Tuesday.

It?s HUMILIATING, STRESSFUL, and DISGUSTING. I have never hated anything in my life. I hate roaches and I have a hard time sleeping at night because I know this place will be ***infested*** no matter WHAT I do. I?ve probably killed no less than 200-300 roaches in this frigging apartment since November 30. No, I am not exaggerating.

To management?s credit, they have been very friendly to us about this but it is too little too late-- The Mark Winkler Company should have been taking care of their buildings and doing some MASSIVE extermination. I hear other units have RODENTS. Populations of roaches are so high in our unit that I found an ALBINO the other day. WTF''' They?ve had a chance to MUTATE'

3) GROSS NEIGHBORS

I had to ask my next-door neighbors to haul eight bags of stinky, rotten trash off their balcony this June because the smell was starting to come into our apartment-- and it was attracting flies.

--Also, the hallway has not been cleaned in the six months I?ve lived here.


4) CRIME

I?ve personally witnessed two drug deals going down in broad daylight, in the middle of the parking lot. People sit around smoking dope on the stairs in units nearby.

It is COMMONPLACE to walk outside and see one or two cars with plastic taped over the windows from all the BREAK-INS that occur.

Rape/Burglary warnings are also common.

I have seen one cop in six months. During the day.

5) PARKING

Forget about having friends over. The office only issues five guest parking passes a DAY, first come, first serve.

This very minute, there are four cars parked on the street and in the parking lot that look like they have been smashed where they sit, like a hit-and-run.

My husband drives a BMW and we always find beer bottles stashed under his tires, or find that someone has been screwing around with his windshield wipers.


I?m sure there?s more, but really-- do you need to hear any more' We ignored the terrible reviews because when we toured this place, it seemed great. We figured that the new renovations meant the problems we read about had been fixed. WRONG-O. THEY?RE JUST COVERED UP REALLY WELL. What good are brand-new, awesome appliances if you can?t even step in your kitchen without hearing a CRUNCH'

I have had *no* problems with management, who have always been kind and professional to me. The maintenance staff are also friendly, and always seem to be outside working hard.

But forget trying to get any information about the integrity of the buildings from anyone, or getting anyone to admit that it IS the company?s fault that these roaches are here. This company SUCKS. I will never rent from MWC again.

We will move on, and never look back. At least my marriage is stronger now.

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