A brief timeline of my apartment hassles
Back in March I signed a lease to move in to my apartment on May 28. It didn't occur to me that this would fall on Memorial Day until just a couple of weeks ago, so I called the leasing office and asked if there would be any difficulties with that. Actually, I was hoping for an early move-in so I could spend more of the long weekend shopping for furniture and stuff. The lady in the office (not my leasing agent) seemed surprised at May 28 and told me that I was scheduled to move in on May 29. I was a little confused, but accepted the change and went on to start scheduling the electricity to be switched over and a Comcast installer.
A week later, on May 23, I got a call from my leasing agent explaining that they were having trouble getting the previous resident to move out on schedule, and my move-in would need to be delayed again to May 30. I was a little miffed about the additional delay, but ultimately I accepted the situation as circumstances beyond their control. So, later that day I explained that my primary concern is that the turnover process (repainting, recarpeting, etc.) would not suffer because of the abbreviated schedule, and I also mentioned my dissatistfaction with the lack of communication that seemed to be happening both inside the office and between the office and myself. My leasing agent agreed that it was an unfortunate situation and assured me that, based on their "prewalk" evaluation, they have plenty of time to make the apartment "great" by Wednesday (5/30). I followed up with her to set a firm appointment of 10:30 am for my move-in / walkthrough inspection.
May 30 arrives, and I show up to the leasing office at 10:20 am with a car full of my belongings. My leasing agent was not there -- apparently she has been suffering some sort of illness which has put her in the hospital earlier in the week and that day she was recovering at home. So, another leasing agent took me over to the apartment to do the inspection. When she opened the door to the apartment, it wasn't "great" -- it was, in fact, "filthy" (her words not mine). It seems the floor cleaners determined that all of the carpet and linoleum needed to be replaced after all, but no one bothered to communicate this to anyone (myself in particular). So I'm told that they would be replaced that afternoon and cleaned up that evening, and I would be able to move in first thing on Thursday May 31. The leasing agent did not bother asking me if I had a place to stay that evening, or somewhere I could secure all of the belongings in my car, or anything. I made an appointment for 9 am the next morning. By the way, I missed the afternoon delivery of my mattress because of this third delay. I drove by later that afternoon to confirm that they were indeed recarpeting the apartment, and later that evening I wrote a very strongly worded letter to my leasing agent and her boss expressing my dissatisfaction with the day's events.
On May 31 I arrived to the leasing office around 8:50 and meet yet another leasing agent (mine is still sick and the second one is now on vacation), and she is just coming off vacation so she doesn't know about any of this either. She goes over to check out the apartment before sending me in for the inspection and apparently it STILL isn't finished -- the cleaners did not show up last night. So I sat around the office while they cleaned up the apartment, and around 9:30 I was given the keys and the inspection form so that I could FINALLY move in. This happened minutes before I saw the Comcast truck driving by the leasing office, so I had to hurry to catch up with them. Side note: At this moment I realized that I had locked my keys in the car earlier that morning, so I asked the leasing agent to see if maintenance could open the car and ran over to the apartment on foot.
Things began to go a little more smoothly after that. The maintenance guy was able to unlock the car with a wire clothes hanger, so I could get to my laptop and cable modem while the Comcast guys did their thing and we got it all set up and working right away, and that afternoon the furniture delivery guys delivered my living room set (I had to assemble the tables) and I picked up my mattress. On Friday I went back to the leasing office and had a brief conversation with my leasing agent and the manager about the whole fiasco, and collected the rest of my move-in materials. The ball is now in their court; we will see if they try to make things right by me and offer some kind of compensation for the time, money, and hassle that they had cost me, or if they weasel out of it with a bunch of blame shifting and offer nothing more than a weak-ass apology. I know that most likely it will be the latter, and I'm not going to push the matter any further... I'm ready to put all of this behind me at this point.
PS - The paint, carpet, and linoleum work is all very shoddy. I guess this is par for the course in apartment living, however. If you aren't satisfied with a small place sloppily made out of cheap junk, a leasing office whose apathy towards you is eclipsed only by their own incompetence, and so on, then your only options are (1) buying a house or (2) dropping $1600+ monthly on a luxury complex.
PPS - On a positive note, the maintenance staff has been really great. I think they outsource the painting and flooring work to contractors who don't give two shits about you, but the guys who unlocked my car and fixed the stuff I pointed out after my inspection were very prompt, courteous, and capable. So, yeah, there's that.
A week later, on May 23, I got a call from my leasing agent explaining that they were having trouble getting the previous resident to move out on schedule, and my move-in would need to be delayed again to May 30. I was a little miffed about the additional delay, but ultimately I accepted the situation as circumstances beyond their control. So, later that day I explained that my primary concern is that the turnover process (repainting, recarpeting, etc.) would not suffer because of the abbreviated schedule, and I also mentioned my dissatistfaction with the lack of communication that seemed to be happening both inside the office and between the office and myself. My leasing agent agreed that it was an unfortunate situation and assured me that, based on their "prewalk" evaluation, they have plenty of time to make the apartment "great" by Wednesday (5/30). I followed up with her to set a firm appointment of 10:30 am for my move-in / walkthrough inspection.
May 30 arrives, and I show up to the leasing office at 10:20 am with a car full of my belongings. My leasing agent was not there -- apparently she has been suffering some sort of illness which has put her in the hospital earlier in the week and that day she was recovering at home. So, another leasing agent took me over to the apartment to do the inspection. When she opened the door to the apartment, it wasn't "great" -- it was, in fact, "filthy" (her words not mine). It seems the floor cleaners determined that all of the carpet and linoleum needed to be replaced after all, but no one bothered to communicate this to anyone (myself in particular). So I'm told that they would be replaced that afternoon and cleaned up that evening, and I would be able to move in first thing on Thursday May 31. The leasing agent did not bother asking me if I had a place to stay that evening, or somewhere I could secure all of the belongings in my car, or anything. I made an appointment for 9 am the next morning. By the way, I missed the afternoon delivery of my mattress because of this third delay. I drove by later that afternoon to confirm that they were indeed recarpeting the apartment, and later that evening I wrote a very strongly worded letter to my leasing agent and her boss expressing my dissatisfaction with the day's events.
On May 31 I arrived to the leasing office around 8:50 and meet yet another leasing agent (mine is still sick and the second one is now on vacation), and she is just coming off vacation so she doesn't know about any of this either. She goes over to check out the apartment before sending me in for the inspection and apparently it STILL isn't finished -- the cleaners did not show up last night. So I sat around the office while they cleaned up the apartment, and around 9:30 I was given the keys and the inspection form so that I could FINALLY move in. This happened minutes before I saw the Comcast truck driving by the leasing office, so I had to hurry to catch up with them. Side note: At this moment I realized that I had locked my keys in the car earlier that morning, so I asked the leasing agent to see if maintenance could open the car and ran over to the apartment on foot.
Things began to go a little more smoothly after that. The maintenance guy was able to unlock the car with a wire clothes hanger, so I could get to my laptop and cable modem while the Comcast guys did their thing and we got it all set up and working right away, and that afternoon the furniture delivery guys delivered my living room set (I had to assemble the tables) and I picked up my mattress. On Friday I went back to the leasing office and had a brief conversation with my leasing agent and the manager about the whole fiasco, and collected the rest of my move-in materials. The ball is now in their court; we will see if they try to make things right by me and offer some kind of compensation for the time, money, and hassle that they had cost me, or if they weasel out of it with a bunch of blame shifting and offer nothing more than a weak-ass apology. I know that most likely it will be the latter, and I'm not going to push the matter any further... I'm ready to put all of this behind me at this point.
PS - The paint, carpet, and linoleum work is all very shoddy. I guess this is par for the course in apartment living, however. If you aren't satisfied with a small place sloppily made out of cheap junk, a leasing office whose apathy towards you is eclipsed only by their own incompetence, and so on, then your only options are (1) buying a house or (2) dropping $1600+ monthly on a luxury complex.
PPS - On a positive note, the maintenance staff has been really great. I think they outsource the painting and flooring work to contractors who don't give two shits about you, but the guys who unlocked my car and fixed the stuff I pointed out after my inspection were very prompt, courteous, and capable. So, yeah, there's that.