Why Can't Rental Companies Not Suck? -Wednesday, September 03, 2003 -8:49 pm-
At the last place I lived (University Village), they thought it was ok to turn my basement into a bus depot. For a most of the winter and all of spring, I had diesel engines revving and idling for hours on end below my bedroom window. After trying to get them to care for 6 months, I moved. Oh, and when I moved in, the place was so coated in oil and tar that I had to scrape the stove clean with a spatula.
When I first moved to Williamsburg Square, I was quite happy. I was astounded that I didn't have to clean the place before I could move in. The place was huge (to me) and the neighbors were quiet. Then I was even more excited when I found out the my girlfriend and one of my best friends would be moving into the unit next to me.
Once they took possession of the new place, things began to turn sour. There are a fair number of problems with the girls' place, and they're not getting resolved. The worst is that the back door doesn't fit. It's too small, leaving a 1/4" gap between it and the jam on all sides. The real problem comes when it rains though. Since the door doesn't seal, the water comes right in and floods the kitchen. And the basement. And for the last month, the complex has done nothing about it. So now the linoleum has puffed up from the water damage, and the subflooring is all squishy because it's falling apart. Beyond that, the carpet has been peed upon by a few hundred too many cats. Mich has already put several dozen hours into cleaning the carpet alone. It's gone from so bad I couldn't comfortable enter the unit to just smelling mildly obnoxious. And still the complex does nothing about it.
And now the whole place looks like a cross between a trailer park and the Balkans. Today, they began a massive project to refurbish the complex. Supposedly, we're getting new gutters, soffits, door trim, back porches, fences, and the basements are going to be re-wrapped. Which is all well and good until you consider what they really mean.
...new gutters and soffits...
What they actually meant is that they're going to prance around on the roof at 7am, knock a whole bunch of sharp, pointy trash onto our steps, and leave us without gutters during the rainiest weeks in Ohio's history
...new door trim...
Ah, now this one I was happy about, our doors and jams were peeling like an Irish person in the Caribbean. Until it turned out that they were merely encasing the water logged (no gutters, remember) doorjambs in vinyl, never to dry again.
...new back porches...
We actually have... had... what were pretty nice back porches for a lower-rent apartment complex. Granted, they were mostly concrete, but they had a few square yards of dirt to plant in, and they were big. Now, enter the jackhammers and bobcats. The old pads are to be replaced with one long pad the size of the entire building. The gardens will be poured over. The whole thing might be smaller. The whole thing might be a rip-off. Oh, wait, it is.
...new fences...
Now the old fences were in quite bad repair. They needed stripped and painted, and in some places, repaired/replaced. However, they were nice fences, quite tall and pretty hard to see through. The new ones will be much more open, and only hip high. How are these going to be the "privacy fences" touted in the advertisement? Supposedly, it's for security. I guess the half height fences make our patio furniture more secure from the prying eyes of midgets.
The only good thing that's coming from all of this is the basements getting re-wrapped so that they won't leak anymore. Actually, mine didn't leak to begin with, but I suppose it'll make someone happy. The downside is that everything I signed the lease for is gone.