Preliminary Review

We are not done with the landlord yet, and anything can happen, but I thought that I would post a preliminary review of them anyway because I can’t hold it back any longer.

The overview:

Why the Thumbs Down? Here is what they stuck us with (so far).

• They wanted us to sign a two year lease; we talked them down to “only” one year.
• They wanted fewer people in the apartment; we talked them into letting all 4 of us stay there.
• They made us pay the finder fee to the real estate agent.
• They made us pay for our own credit checks before they would rent to us.
• They wanted us to pay for credit checks for all 4 of us. We talked them down to only the two who are actually writing the checks.
• They tried to put an automatic, one year renewal into the lease if we missed the termination deadline. We talked them out of that trick.
• On day 1, their sewer drain backed up raw sewage into their basement. They ignored the spill for a day or two, and we finally called our own people to get it fixed and cleaned up.
• The hot water faucet in the kitchen let go and would not turn off; we had call our own plumber to get that fixed.
• The drain under the kitchen sink came loose; I fixed that myself. 🙂
• They stuck us with the lawn maintenance.
• They stuck us with the snow shoveling.
• Most of the windows had no screens on them, so we sweltered all Summer with closed windows. Their maintenance guy finally delivered the screens in October. They don’t fit the windows. Thanks.
• There were no instructions for the thermostat. We had to download those from the web in order to turn the heat on.
• There were no instructions for the smoke alarms. We ended up calling the fire department when the smoke alarms went off in the middle of the night.
• They never fixed the dangerous basement stairs as promised.
• They never covered the lumpy basement floor with a platform as promised.
• They never fixed the broken window in the attic as promised.
• They never gave us the extra keys they promised. They only gave us one (1) (uno) (eins) key for all of us to use.
• We had to get rid of the hornets in the attic ourselves.
• The stove had a cracked glass top. It took two weeks to get it replaced.
• The heat quit working Thanksgiving weekend; we had to call our own guy to get it fixed.
• And finally, adding insult to injury, we had to replace the batteries in their !@#$% carbon monoxide detector….. after we moved out.

OK. That is enough of that; I have violated my own 15 second rule. The spleen is vented. On to cheerier topics in the next post.