Articles – Page 84 – The Renegade Coder

As of today, I've been in Columbus for maybe two full weeks. In that time, my previous landlord has managed to forget to prorate my final payment. So, here I am with $-302 in the bank and a keyboard ready to expose the slumlords of Atlanta. Consider this my Yelp review. Keeping Score Normally I don't like to keep score because that's just bad for relationships. That said, I can think of at least seven reasons why we would never have stayed in that apartment complex even if we weren't forced to move. Let's take a look: Bookkeeping On more than one occasion, my wife or I would complete some required paperwork only to have records of it disappear within mere hours or days. For example, when we moved, we were told we were going to get $500 off our first month's rent. Sounds great, right? Well, whoever was in charge of the books added and removed the discount several times until we weren't sure if it was there or not. When I went to inquire, they claimed it was there, so I checked my work. After visiting a second time, they realized the numbers were off and finally added the discount. Around that same time, they managed to accidentally charge us for all our standard fees at once instead of over the course of the lease. When I asked why I was being charged over $2,000 on my first rent bill, they realized their mistake. A couple of months before we left, we filled out an intent to vacate form which they never put into the system. When we got a forwarding address, we gave it to the office to update the intent to vacate form that they never filed. To no surprise, they didn't update the form. Eventually, we had to get the office to fill out some paperwork for our new apartment. Only at that point did everything finally get filed. Is keeping proper records too hard to ask? Software When it comes to handling money and maintenance, I would assume most apartment complexes would be in the 21st century. Unfortunately, they rarely are. And for the ones that are, they barely have a grasp on it. For instance, my previous apartment complex outsourced their maintenance and billing through a third-party provider. While that's fine, management had almost no way of working through billing issues. When we first setup autopay, the payment didn't go through, and we received a late payment violation. Fortunately, they were nice enough to let us off the hook on that, but the issue shouldn't even have occurred. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were billed the entire rent from the month of July when our lease was up the 13th. In other words, they billed us nearly three times as much as we owed while we were also trying to pay a second lease. Talk about inconvenient. When we asked about it, they claimed they had no way to set an end date on the billing service. They simply had to delete our account and send us a check for the difference. Of course, they did make it very clear that they legally had 30 days to cut us the check, so we're still waiting on that money. Security Just for some context, are apartment complex was technically in a gated community. I use that term lightly because the gates never worked. In fact, the gates were so useless that often times we couldn't use the community pool because it was filled with nonresidents. As an added bonus, they would leave the gates open during working hours, so they really weren't very secure. Honestly, I didn't mind so much. It wasn't like we were subject to a ton of crime or anything, but the open gates allowed door-to-door businesses into the complex to harass residents. On top of that, forget trying to use the security hotline. One time, we decided to call security because someone was shining a flashlight in our bedroom window, but they never answered. Not only did they not answer, but the number wasn't exactly easy to find. That said, they did install a security system in our apartment as a sort of consolation prize. Deceit Keep in mind that we never got to tour the Atlanta apartment before we moved. Basically, we walked right up and moved into a place. From previous phone calls, we were promised carpet and a second floor apartment for the balcony. Naturally, we got neither of those. Instead, we received a hard wood floored apartment with a patio surrounded by bushes. Also, we were told we could get a washer and dryer for free as new tenants. As it turns out, there was a monthly fee for using their appliances. Thanks to their horrible bookkeeping, we never paid a cent for that washer and dryer. Maintenance Normally, I wouldn't complain about maintenance. In fact, I think they did a really great job, but there were a couple major hiccups along the way. For one, we received a broken fridge pretty much as soon as we arrived. To be fair, the fridge was more of a ticking time bomb. That's because we had an ice maker that didn't work. We thought maybe it wasn't supposed to work, so we left it as-is. A couple of months into living there, we woke up to a small flood in our kitchen and living room. As it turns out, the ice maker just decided to start working at random. The problem was it never stopped pumping water: I apologize for the quality of the photos. These we taken at about six in the morning, and we were both pretty flustered. Another time, the sprinkler on our patio burst because we got quite a bit of snow and cold in Atlanta. When maintenance showed up to fix it, they cut a massive hole in the roof of the patio and in our living. While that would normally be fine, they didn't actually patch that hole for over a month. Management If all the above wasn't bad enough, my hat goes off to management. They were absolutely atrocious. When we first tried to move in, we were running a bit late. The office was set to close at 6:00PM, and we weren't set to arrive until 6:30PM. As a result, we decided to make a call to see if we could work around our arrival time. Do I dare say what happened? As fate would have it, management told us they couldn't possibly wait to let us in. When we asked if they could leave the key with maintenance, they refused. Ultimately, we were forced to find a hotel about two hours out to call it a night. The next morning they broke the news that our apartment didn't meet any of our agreed upon criteria. As we were set to leave the apartment, our entire building received a lease violation for noise and trash in the hallways. There is nothing I enjoy more than being punished for the actions of a few. As an added note, management was constantly turning over. In the course of a year, I can't say that any of them knew our names. In fact, there were several times where we were carded while trying to get a package. Learn who your residents are, fam! Cockroaches Every month, we were required to pay a pest control fee. Despite that fee, we still had visits from plenty of little creatures including centipedes, ants, beetles, flies, silverfish, and cockroaches. Overall, the community was pretty clean, so I have to chalk many of these issues up to Atlanta. That said, we were paying for pest control, and I still had to deal with the dreaded cockroaches every so often: Nobody should have to deal with these disgusting creatures regardless of where they live. The Real Slumlords of Atlanta To be honest, slumlord is not the right term here. For the most part, we really enjoyed living there despite some hiccups along the way. In fact, the community is quite nice, albeit expensive. That said, I do think we need to hold housing institutions to a higher standard. Why are they able to charge so much but provide so little? I'm hopping on that tiny house movement as soon as my student debt is paid.