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The Quarters at Sterling House


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porterfield089

Resident 2008 - 2009

7/14/2009

For everyone living in Austin (West Campus area), I would strongly recommend against living in any of the apartments managed by the Quarters on Campus. Aside from the fact that the insides of the buildings are reminiscent of prison hallways, and the elevators take several minutes to travel as little as two floors, the Quarters is run by an absolutely despicable and incompetent management team. The biggest problems I've had with them both happened recently, in the form of an unnecessary and apparently illegal eviction notice, and the illegal towing of my car. The eviction was a hamfisted overreaction to my rent payment being two days late. I paid the rent, and it went away. It didn't really cause any great inconvenience, but it was scary because the eviction notice was issued on a Friday after everyone in their office with any sort of responsibility had gone home for the weekend, leaving me to wonder until Monday whether or not I would still have to move out. Upon calling, I was informed that after completing my payment there would be no eviction, which is nice, but it begs the question of why they would use such an overtly threatening scare tactic when a simple notice would have been equally effective. They later pulled the same stunt with Jackson under similar circumstances. On that same weekend, I was shocked to discover my car had been towed from the Quarters parking garage I pay a ridiculous $125 a month to use. I had been provided with no notification whatsoever of any intent to tow my car for any reason. Their reason for issuing the tow order was that I was parked in a spot other than my assigned space, which I only did because the garage has been about 20% full at the absolute maximum all summer, and the spot I chose to park in had been unoccupied for weeks. The problem with what they did is that they failed to comply with multiple towing laws and statutes which dictate the process by which a property owner may tow a car. First and foremost, a property owner is required to provide a car's owner with ample advance notification of their intent to tow the car, which Quarters failed to do. Beyond that, the signage in their garage is not compliant with the law, meaning they do not even have the legal right to tow any cars from their garage, at all. After discovering this, my dad and I decided we would ask that they retrieve my car from the impound at no cost to me, which would be the easiest possible way to fix the Quarters' mistake for everyone involved. When confronted with this request by my father, who acted as my attorney through this whole ordeal, the management staff responded dismissively, essentially claiming that we would simply have to deal with it, and treated my dad like an idiot with him on speakerphone so that multiple people could listen as they tried to make a show out of his call (a very unfortunate decision for them). After being transferred up the ladder to the company's head manager, Jackie Goldin, to whom he plainly laid out all of the evidence of the illegality of their actions, he was scoffed at, and dared by her to try to do anything about it. So, we filed a complaint against the company seeking damages. Sometime about a week and a half later, probably right about when they received a notice from the court that we'd filed the complaint, they suddenly had a change of heart. All of a sudden they decided to offer me a check to reimburse me for the full expense of the towing. It would be no less than 18 days before said check would actually be ready for me to pick up, it turned out. We suspect that the Quarters was trying to get us to cancel the hearing based solely on the promise of a check. There is only a two week window in which tow complaints can be filed, and had we taken the bait we would not be able to pursue legal action against them. I called the Quarters' office multiple times, and showed up in person on one occasion to ask about the check they were supposed to give me. Every time, I was told my check would be ready for me to pick up "tomorrow," yet whenever the next day rolled around it would still not be there. Once they finally realized that I would not be dropping my case against them, they finally paid me back. Getting them to do so was extremely time consuming and annoying. Throughout this whole fiasco, the Quarters has been criminally unapologetic, not only for towing my car illegally but for the complete lack of basic respect and civility toward me by not even giving me any notification whatsoever of their intent to tow the car. Even a simple phone call to say "Hey, could you move your car? It needs to be in your assigned space." After living here for a year, they surely know that it is my car. At the very least, they know that the car MUST belong to a tenant, because the garage is inaccessible without a windshield tag. Their willingness to tow first and ask questions later shows a complete disregard for the people who pay much more than they should already to live in their overpriced apartments. It is not cheap to get a towed car out of the impound. So, that's my major beef with the Quarters. They completely screwed me over, tried to act like they held no responsibility for their actions, and have been unwilling to even offer an apology or admit any wrongdoing for the entire 5 weeks or so that I've been dealing with them over this. Other negative features of the Quarters: -On our first day living in our apartment, it took FIVE trips to the leasing office to get the correct keys to our rooms -During our first two weeks living here, Blake's bike was stolen out of our supposedly secure parking garage, and they were completely unhelpful afterward -The parking garage's gate is open at least 40% of the time, sometimes for days on end, which is a complete security failure as both the cars in the garage and an elevator which leads up to the rooms are then easily accessible to anyone -If you lose your room key or lock it in your room and you can't find a friendly maintenance staff member to open your door for you, the management will charge you $50 per day to RENT a key to get back into your room -There is no community within the Sterling house building whatsoever. We have met almost nobody here because everyone keeps completely to themselves. I can't speak for the other Quarters apartments about that, though -God forbid you ever need to talk to the Quarters staff about anything. They are all painfully stupid and occasionally quite rude -I met a girl who told me that, after signing up for a special offer lease which would have lowered her monthly payments, the Quarters billed her the regular rent price anyway and then denied that she had signed up for the special offer So, to make a long story short, don't live at the Quarters. It's not worth your money in any sense, and it's a painful experience.

    Review 23 out of 26

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