Review History for anonymous13082416

Heritage at Freemason


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anonymous13082416

Resident 2013 - 2017

4/29/2017

BLUF: Heritage at Freemason used to be one of the better deals and nicest complexes in downtown Norfolk, ever since JRK took over, it has fallen off a cliff, AVOID AT ALL COSTS. My wife and I have lived at Heritage at Freemason since November of 2013 when I moved down here due to military orders. When we originally moved in, we lived in the College Place building before upgrading to a larger apartment in the Tazewell building. When the complex was owned by Collins, it was incredibly tenant friendly and it was obvious that the front office cared deeply about the tenants, knew who we were, and were there to make every effort to maximize our experience. Once JRK took over, the complex went downhill quickly. Unfortunately, this happened shortly after we signed our last lease and as a result, we moved out quickly. There is no way to describe the incompetence displayed by the management of this complex on a daily basis, but I will tell some stories that attempt to portray it. We started to get some mold spots in the ceiling of our bathroom, when we called the complex to report this, they told us that they would paint over the issue, but there was nothing else they could do to. Hang on, because this is the very least of our concerns. I noticed some mold spots with black coloring on the wall in our master bedroom (i.e. they were right next to where i slept every night). In the course of my investigation, I found that the bay window in the master bedroom had a split seem outside where the corners of the wood had separated. I sent these pictures to the complex after calling to report this on a Saturday afternoon at 2pm. I called every two hours until 10pm and then resumed again on Sunday. When I called Monday (from work) they informed me that someone would be out to see me at some point on Tuesday. While I was at work, the maintenance man told my wife that we had mold because she took hot showers and that it could possibly be the split seem but it wasnt. When I learned about this and pushed, they agreed to look at the split seem, the wood was soggy and wet and the insulation had to be cut out because it was soaking wet and covered in mold. Luckily this only took 3 days to fix. Our sink stopped working because the water lines broke and flooded out the cabinet underneath the sink. This is never good, but luckily it was before my wife and I left to visit her parents for 4 days over the holidays. We gave them permission to enter our apartment and fix the issue. We even received an e-mail that our work order had been resolved. When I got home, I went to fill our dog's water bowl and flooded out the cabinet again I was very clearly not happy. I called the front office who called me to inform me that they had in fact taken care of the issue. After being told that we had to give them 48 hours to get someone there, they were told that we had given them 5 days and then they lied to us. This was fixed 4 hours after this phone call in one visit by the maintenance man. The parking situation at this complex is unbelievable. I cannot count how many times I have been blocked in or had someone parked in my spot. The complex finally asked that everyone send in the numbers of the spots that they had been assigned because the records were lost and they had no idea who was supposed to park where. They then gave themselves a month to sort through all the spots and reassign before we would be given our assignments for their records. They set their own timetable and still managed to be a week late on it. I was amazed at how poorly they could manage a task that they had given themselves. This is probably the worst part of the story so far. In getting ready to sign our final lease with Heritage, we first reached out to them September 26th about a lease that expired November 5th. We then reached out again October 16th and did not hear until we went into the office. We were promised a lease before the end of October that we could sign. We did not see one until November 10th and it was a $300 per month increase, after no work had been done on our apartment and we had received no upgrades (not even a carpet cleaning). When we stated that we were not going to agree to that, they said ok, they would come back with a better offer. We asked about when we would receive this and we were told to give them 5 days. After 5 days we sent an e-mail per day and went in to the office to ask every other day. When we were finally able to reach the regional manager who had been brought in to fix the situation I was out to sea (I am in the Navy) and my wife spoke to her. This woman agreed to keep our rent the same and sent the contract over the same day so that at this point (December 18th) we could have a contract to sign and have a place to live. We had continued to pay rent in the interim as a show of good faith, but we received none in return. The last straw to this was an e-mail sent by the complex to all residents stating that 2 bedrooms apartments (like ours) were now available for $1199 per month (or $400 less than we were paying). When we called about this, we were told that residents signing a lease to continue at the complex were not eligible for this deal, even though the e-mail had been sent to residents. I will conclude by saying that the overall incompetence of this complex goes beyond these stories. I know that most people who post reviews online are extremely dissatisfied with the service they receive and I fall into this category. For 2.5 years I absolutely did not though, I was so happy with the service that I wanted to post a review about how fantastic they were here. Things have changed drastically. I hope that this helps someone who is looking here and wants to have a good resident experience DO NOT RENT HERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Review 14 out of 53

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    Heritage at Freemason

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