This one might be a little long but details are a necessity.

My family has lived in these apartments for a little over a year now and to summarize our experience, it's been a freaking nightmare.

We moved into our current unit back in 03/2007 and the place was great! Whenever we had any maintenance requests, they were done in a matter of days or even less. Then around 05/2007, the management must have changed cause one of the people working in the office left. And from that point, it all went downhill. Now it takes weeks if not months to get any maintenance work done.

Our dishwasher's soap dispenser was broken and the maintenance guy came in to look at it. He gave us the typical excuse (Have to order some parts, will come back). We waited a week before we started calling daily. One of the leasing managers would tell us they'll let the maintenance guy know. It ended up taking 5 weeks before they finally came out and replaced the dishwasher (what happened to the ordered part'')

Our clothes dryer does not dry clothes. We'll run it half filled for over 3 hours and the clothes are still damp afterwards. If we didn't have to pay for electricity, this wouldn't bother me as much. But my wife is forced to air dry most of our laundry in the dining room and 2nd bedroom using our fans for hours before throwing them in the useless dryer. We've complained about the dryer for over 5 months now.

There was some sort of leak in our apartment on the carpet. Near the doors for both bathrooms, the carpet was getting damp and kept getting wet even though we'd soak up the water with a towel. Then we noticed that the walls around the bathroom mirrors were getting mildew. We called and called and called and they wouldn't come out to check it! Finally one guy came out and he said he didn't see any problem and left within a minute. So we kept calling and finally the head maintenance guy came and he said there is a leak in the upstairs apartment bathroom (gross!). He removed the mirror in our bathroom and you could see the wall was practically rotting. They fixed the plaster behind the mirror and even sent a guy out to shampoo the carpet where it had been soaking for weeks. Of course, they left the mirror sitting in the hallway. It took about 3 more weeks of phone calls to get their lazy asses out to remount the mirror. The total time for this endeavor was over 6 weeks.

Master bedroom closet's light broke on us. They never even bothered to replace the rotting pull string so of course, one day my wife is pulling it and the whole thing breaks off. The maintenance guy comes (after a week of course) and says he has to order a part. Repeated phone calls lead us nowhere and it took almost 4 weeks before the guy finally comes out to replace the light fixture. For 4 weeks, we were forced to use a flash light in our master bedroom closet.

Our biggest problem by far is the roach problem (which you've read in other reviews). They pretty much let anyone rent these apartments and someone nasty must have moved in next to us (below above next to us, I'm not sure) We literally see 8-10 roaches every day in our kitchen. We've complained and complained since 08/2007 and all they do is send some exterminator over who sprays some useless crap that does absolutely nothing. Each time, they tell us to empty the kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets completely (at least a 3 hour job unloading and 3 hours for loading). I've never been so damned frustrated with an apartment complex before in my life. We can't even leave our food out after cooking it cause a roach will get in. I've found a roach crawling on a casserole I had just made 30 minutes previously before and ended up having to throw the whole damned thing away. The roach problem has reduced my wife to tears because she's so damned frustrated. We keep our place clean and pristine and we get to enjoy the company of roaches. And of course, the apartment people don't give a flying crap.

The grounds are nasty as well. They practically do no upkeep whatsoever. Theres huge mud puddles throughout the complex and theres usually trash all over the place as well.

The only decent thing I can say about this place is I've never really had any problems finding parking. The spots are a little small but that's true for most complexes.

I will update this post as I gather more details but I can guarantee that you won't be happy here if you like living in a clean home. The incompetence of the staff and the maintenance is mind boggling to say the least. I've told them before, if I showed that level of incompetence at my work place, I would have been fire a long time ago. They're very quick when it comes to cashing my rent check but when it comes time to provide a tiny bit of service, they're nowhere to be found.

========================= EDIT (05/09/2008) ====================================

For the past 2 weeks, I've been calling the leasing office to complain about water leaking in my pantry onto my dryer and washing machine. They kept saying they'll send someone out and they never did. Well apparently while I was at work yesterday, the whole apartment lost electricity. The water caused the dryer/washing machine to short out and blew the whole circuit breaker box. On top of that, we discovered that water had been leaking into the circuit breaker box. Oh and did i forget to mention the green mold growing all over my pantry walls'

So I get home to a dark cold apartment yesterday evening and call the after hours emergency line at 5:30PM. The maintenance guy that was on call gives me a call at 6:00PM and says he's on his way over. I called the emergency line at 6:30, 7:15, 8:00, 8:30, and again at 9:00PM basically wondering where the holy hell he is. I also called the dumbasses cell phone (his # showed up on my cell phone's caller id). He never answered his phone. I kept asking the emergency line bastards to call him and then to call me to give me his response and they refused to. They said it's not what they do. Then I asked them to tell the idiot to give me a call to let me know if he's gonna come or not. They kept insisting they can't make him call me (duh). So I left them with "Just tell him to call me, if he wants to fine, if not ---- him."

So the moron never calls but eventually shows up at 9:30PM. He comes in, looks at the circuit breaker box, goes upstairs a few times, comes back down. at 10:00PM, he comes back down again and tells me he shut off the leak from the upstairs apartment (hope they burn in hell. 2nd time we've had a leak from those bastards). He then fiddles with the circuit breaker and then just leaves without a word. I assumed he was coming back but by 10:45PM, I figured he was a lost cause. I called him up and asked if he was gonna come back and he tells me he called an electrician. At that point, I was thinking screw it, im going to bed.

At 11:45PM, I hear a loud knocking on the front door. I quickly get up and open the door and it's the electrician. I'm stammering like an idiot while trying to explain the problem because I'm still half asleep. He goes to look at the circuit breaker and starts cursing (at the apartment complex for letting it get to that point) We spent an hour jury rigging an extension cord so he could use his light. Once we did that, he removed all of the switches and replaced each one. He showed them to me and they were all completely rusted through and filled with water. He then went upstairs to try to throw the main switch but it kept tripping whenever he tried. So he comes down and tells me he has some bad news. He doesn't have a replacement for the main switch but he can swap out one from one of the unoccupied apartments. He said he has to get permission from the maintenance guy before he does so.

So he calls up the idiot and of course, the idiot doesn't answer his phone. So me and the electrician are sitting in my living room at 3:00AM bullshitting about back home (he's from texas too ) waiting for the idiot to call back. Never happens.

So the electrician apologizes for not being able to get my power back up. Of course I tell him it's not his fault, it's the idiot's fault. And I go to sleep covered with 2 blankets while still freezing my ass off.


This morning rolls around, I'm at the leasing office at 10:00AM (the time they open) and I really laid it into the property manager. I was there for about 45 minutes chewing her out as well as the maintenance guy. On the plus side, there were two couples in the office who were looking to rent a place. One couple was going to sign their lease this morning while the other couple was just wanted to check out the place. Needless to say, they all left after hearing me describe my experience with this morons. I also let them know that I had called the Health department about the mold growing in my pantry. I also took over 20 pictures of all the mess for my records when it comes time to break my lease. At 11:30AM, I hear a knock on my door and the head maintenance guy is there along with 3 electricians (including the guy from last night). They all get to work as fast as they can and lo and behold, I get my power back at 12:30PM.



====================== EDIT (05/13/2008) ====================================

Well apparently the power tripping dryer never went away. During the day, my wife called me to let me know that the power went out again. The maintenance guy came out again along with an electrician. The electrician determined that there was a problem with the circuit breaker box (or something like that. The leasing office won't give me the details). So the leasing office told us that they have to special order a part and they have no idea when it will be available. And on top of that, we're not going to be able to use our dryer! Needless to say, I was upset. Especially when they told us they would give us change so we can go to the laundromat.

After letting them know that this was unacceptable, they gave us a key to the apartment above us and told us we can use that dryer. This was acceptable as a temporary solution (have to dry our clothes somehow). Of course when my wife goes up to apartment to put a load in, the stupid dryer isn't even hooked up. So after calling up the leasing office, they tell us they don't know when they can hook it up but they'll give us a key to another apartment. My wife, needing to get our wet clothes dried, said that was fine. What they didn't tell her over the phone was that the keys were to an apartment across the parking lot and on the 3rd floor! Imagine how fun it is to haul up 3 loads of laundry (weighing about 20 pounds each) on a hot 95 degree humid summer day.
Grossly unacceptable!


Today, my wife called me at work and let me know that the last load i brought back from the apartment was not completely dry. Not only were half the clothes still damp but they smelled mildewy. We ran that machine for 2 cycles @ 100 minutes each. And between cycles, I cleaned the lint filter out completely. Sounds like this dryer drys as well as the one we had in our unit.



==================== EDIT (07/20/2008) ======================================

So we talked to the property manager about getting some sort of reduction in our rent since it's been over 2 months now without a working dryer. We talk to her on a Monday and she said she has to contact the management company and will get back to us. Of course we wait and never hear back from her. So we go to the leasing office that same week on Friday. She tells us that she spoke with the management company and they feel that since they provided us with a "reasonable" alternative for a working dryer, that they feel that they shouldn't need to compensate us at all. Of course this was grossly unacceptable. I then demanded the name and phone # of the person she had spoken with. At first, she didn't seem to want to give it to me. Then we spoke about some of the other problems with the unit and she promised us that the dryer would be fixed the following thursday.

We get up to leave and as we're sitting in the car, I immediately call the phone # provided to me and ask to speak with the gentleman (I'm not sure if he's some sort of manager at Paradigm management). The person I spoke with told me that he's on the phone at the moment (this is important) and that I can leave a message with his voicemail. I told her this was fine and I left a detailed message requesting a call back from him. As I'm buckling my daughter into her car seat, my wife remembered that we had a package that we needed to pick up from the office so she goes back inside to get it. She comes back out telling me that the property manager wishes to speak with us again. When we go back inside, the property manager has suddenly done a 180 degree turn and says that she feels that we should be compensated and asked us how much do we think would be appropriate. So we make an offer which she accepts (in fact, she gave us $10 more than we asked for).

Next Thursday rolls around and of course, our dryer still isn't working. The maintenance guys (or electricians, not sure) don't show up till the following week. Afterwards, we try to use our dryer and it's still dead as a door nail. We let the office know and they said they have to contact the electrician. We wait for almost 2 more weeks w/o hearing anything and finally we get a phone call early morning from someone saying their an electrician and that they would be coming out that day. While I'm at work, my wife says a maintenance guy came by and it turns out that the original maintenance guy ( might have been the same guy, I'm not sure), never even plugged in the damn dryer! Unfortunately, I couldn't tell if it was plugged in or not since the plug is hidden behind the dryer and the dryer is mounted on the wall.

So as of now, we have a running dryer but it still doesn't dry our clothes properly. We ran a light load for almost 3 hours and the clothes were still somewhat damp when they came out.

User Responses
From: nikoquacks	Date: 03/25/2008
To whoever wrote this response...I agree with you 100%. I've written a review on here also that is alomost just like yours. Im so glad that I moved form that place 2 months ago. So sorry that you're still there!!!
From: Dellick2004	Date: 05/09/2008
I also just posted a review in 100 percent agreeance with you. This place is a complete nightmare. We have had flooding in our living room (through the vent on the wall) 3 times, and there is definitely a mold problem in our bathroom wall (where our upstairs neighbors' washer overflowed, seeping through the wall/floor into ours). Today it rained hard and our water heater area outside flooded, again flooding our living room. The staff barely try to be sympathetic to the problem, and rather than actually bring a contractor in to fix the problem we get a maintenance guy who could give a flying crap and it never gets done right. Ugh. Anyone offering free legal advice?
From: bowersba	Date: 05/11/2008
Wow, thanks for your posts. I was thinking about moving there. And this place gets a 60% approval which is high for the area. Is there no place in freaking northern Virginia where you can live a decent life without having to donate a limb???
From: dabuddha	Date: 07/30/2008
Updated
From: whatthehell11	Date: 09/22/2008
You know, they are never gonna stop renting, as long as there is people who cant really find a decent price for rent. This would be the perfect place and area to live in, but they have got to do better with the credit checks, or should I say background checks.AlI ask for is a clean none violent place to live. I can't deal with these crazy ass teens who have no problem busting a cap in your ass!And what are they eating because their asses are bigger than mine...

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