"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
03/05/2015 at 11:55 • Filed to: None
2
13|
"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
03/05/2015 at 11:55 • Filed to: None | 2
| 13 |
I live in a rental townhouse owned by a property management company. For the most part, I like my house, and the property management company. But their maintenance crews, well, not so much. The picture above is my door bell, as repaired by my landlord's oh-so-incompetent maintenance crew.
Things that my landlord has "fixed" include:
The aforementioned doorbell. The old button was an intercom-style one. It died. The landlord put a new sound maker box inside the house, without an intercom. I guess they couldn't re-use the old button. But instead of taking down the old button, they stuck a new button on top of it .
We have a faucet for a hose in our garage. With a hose attached, it was spraying water everywhere, so they did something to it where now there's a big 2x4 stuck to the wall between the drywall and the faucet.
They replaced our patio door blinds and didn't spackle over the holes left by the old blinds.
Our garage door was making all kinds of ungodly groaning noises, so they special-ordered a new door which took several weeks to arrive, and slightly patched up the old one in the meantime. When the new door arrived, it was shorter than the door frame, so they put an un-painted board across the top of the inside of the door frame. They put rubber gaskets on the sides of the door frame to seal against the door, but not that stupid board at the top, leaving our garage drafty as fuck. The land lady told me the board hadn't been painted because it was too cold out and they'd do it in the spring (but not install a properly-sized door).
Our porch light wasn't working. They checked it out and told us the bulb in it was too big (a bulb which we hadn't put there) so they took the trim ring off to allow the bulb to fit. They'd put the trim ring back if we got a properly sized bulb. I did, and they put the trim ring "back," except instead of getting one designed to fit into the housing, they offset it from the hole, and drilled a couple holes through it into the wood ceiling of the porch, leaving an ugly gap.
When I renewed my lease, I informed the property manager lady that I'd be sending her a list of a bunch of maintenance items. I sent everything I just described, plus complained that our dishwasher and furnace are loud as hell, and the hot water heater takes forever to warm up, and oh, there's some mold on the rafters in our utility room, which I sent this picture of.
Last week, a maintenance guy came and fixed some, but not all of the issues:
Dishwasher seems slightly quieter, but not much. I think they installed a new belt, but it's just an old, low-end dishwasher without much sound deadening. I'd try to get them to replace it but the furnace & hot water heater are bigger priorities.
Holes left when replacing the patio door blinds were filled.
Mold in the utility room looks like it was scrubbed with bleach.
A rubber seal was added to the stupid unpainted board at the top of the garage door frame.
Last night, I sent another email about the remaining items which still hadn't been fixed. Without any response from the property manager, I got a call from a maintenance guy this morning who wanted permission to enter. My gf is at home so I told him to call her. She just texted me that he's working on the porch light. I cc'ed her on the email I sent last night so she's going to keep an eye on him and see what all actually gets fixed.
I don't like to make myself a "problem" tenant, and yeah this place is really cheap for the amount of space and features we get. But at the same time, we pay our rent on time every month, and all we want in return is for the landlord to live up to their end of the bargain by maintaining the place.
Still doesn't make me in a rush to buy a house though. That's expensive.
UPDATE:
My gf called me after the maintenance guy left. He properly fixed the door bell and the porch light.
For the furnace, he claims he fixed it, and denied that he told my gf last winter that it was on its last legs and would need to be replaced soon. He said "I don't know where you got that from," she said, "that's what you told me."
For the hot water heater, he said the pipes run through the garage and they're insulated, and it taking so long to warm up "was just how it is." When she asked him about an insulation blanket for the heater itself, he said no.
She doesn't want to have them back in the place for a little while, so I'm going to listen to the furnace when I get home tonight and see if it's still making the same amount of noise, and I'm going to wait a while to call the property manager lady back and bitch about the maintenance guy being a dick to my gf and acting like the hot water is supposed to take that long to warm up.
HammerheadFistpunch
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:01 |
|
As a landlord I try and do good work, mostly when the tenants are out and I can afford to spend some time on it. Something are bigger than others, but MOLD?! At least in my state its a law that you are required to clean up mold in 48 hours.
|
Textured Soy Protein
> HammerheadFistpunch
03/05/2015 at 12:03 |
|
They did at least clean up the mold quickly after being notified.
Bryan doesn't drive a 1M
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:07 |
|
That was my biggest complaint about renting. You aren't really allowed to fix things properly yourself, but getting the landlord or management to fix things can be a nightmare.
jariten1781
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:10 |
|
Rental life. This shit is why I just started fixing everything myself. If it was less than 100 bucks or so I just did it so the maintenance guy wouldn't come make it worse or uglier. They don't live there so they just don't care.
The last place I rented tried to dock me 500 bucks for cleaning after I moved despite the fact I had before after pictures showing it cleaner the day I moved out than it was when I moved in. I dropped them 300 bucks of receipts for repairs I had and threatened small claims if they didn't refund full and promptly. I got the full amount plus like half the receipts along with a note that they would have worked with me if they realized I had photos and didn't appreciate the threat. Fuck em.
Never renting again if I can help it.
|
Textured Soy Protein
> jariten1781
03/05/2015 at 12:12 |
|
Pictures have proved the most effective way to deal with my landlord as well. They're obviously trying to spend as little money as possible on maintenance. But I mean come on, they flat-out ignored the door bell and porch light until I sent pictures.
E92M3
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:18 |
|
Don't take it personal, but I would hate to have you as a tenant. I have one that I'm lucky to hear from once a year (in a 30+ yr old house). My other tenant (in a much newer house) acted like she was staying at the Ritz Carlton in the beginning. I finally set some expectations with her. It's my business, so I can't be making improvements every single month.
|
Textured Soy Protein
> Bryan doesn't drive a 1M
03/05/2015 at 12:18 |
|
My landlord seems to respond best to pictures. But the maintenance guys are lazy incompetent slugs who are disrespectful to my gf and only do full repair jobs when I send pictures of their botched work to the landlord.
|
Textured Soy Protein
> E92M3
03/05/2015 at 12:25 |
|
No offense taken. I honestly don't like having to make maintenance requests. I've rented in a few other places and never had much need to call maintenance before this place. My main issues with the landlord are:
A) They act like their shitty old barely-working appliances are "supposed" to work that way, and give BS excuses for why they can't work better.
B) They do stupid bad jobs on minor repairs necessitating one or more follow-up repairs, which could have avoided if they did the job right the first time. I.e. the porch light and door bell. What kind of quality of work is that?
Now, I know I'm getting a good deal on the place for what I'm paying. It allows me to be cheap on my living expenses so I can put money towards long-term savings and expensive cars. But at the same time, I expect a minimum level of functioning appliances and doing minor repairs correctly the first time.
|
jariten1781
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:31 |
|
Yeah...I took pictures of everything after a bad experience I had years ago. House I was renting was a late 1800s build. It had a wood burning stove installed in the 1930s that had sometime in the 70s been blocked off when the owners had put in electric floor heaters. It had been converted to a ghetto tiny fireplace in a stove box.. I contacted the owner (fellow Navy guy, not the property management company) and said I was going to restore the wood stove if he didn't mind because the stupid floor heaters didn't work well and were ungodly expensive to run.
Refurbed the whole thing, which was a huge PITA having to find and fab parts as well as replacing the old asbestos heat shielding with modern non-cancerous millboard. Owner came by and was super stoked about the whole thing and paid me back for it even though I didn't ask for anything. It was an awesome stove BTW, managed well it provided whole home heat for 18ish hours with just three splits and some fatwood. And the property was large enough that I had enough wood with just dead falls for the entire winter. Went from paying many hundreads of bucks a month in heat to paying 0. I also restored a hot-tub they had on the back deck that hadn't been run since the 80s.
Then when I moved out the property management company bilked me out of 1300 bucks for 'cleaning and restoring' the stove as well as other cleaning non-sense. I had no evidence of the initial condition and the owner was on deployment and I was leaving for deployment so I couldn't get him to back me. Lesson learned...take pictures of everything, document all agreements made and have them signed, and buy a place sooner rather than later.
Still pisses me off whenever I think about it...thanks for reminding me! haha
|
E92M3
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:37 |
|
Those repairs are a joke.
Frank Grimes
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:45 |
|
Its things like this that I dont understand and confuse the crap out of me.
How does someone do repairs like that and feel good about themself? It is bad all around for the person's pride who does such sloppy crappy work and for the person seeing a job done poorly and reflects bad on everyone involved.
How does someone even get hired who does crap like that.
Maybe this is more a reflection on me who is trying to figure out what I want to do for a career and has struggled to find work before but if one can't take pride in his job than he or she would be unhappy and should probably make a change.
505Turbeaux
> Textured Soy Protein
03/05/2015 at 12:53 |
|
mmm black mold. Be a damn shame if you reported that in writing and has some health issues...
|
Textured Soy Protein
> 505Turbeaux
03/05/2015 at 13:01 |
|
Oh yeah, I'm never going to delete that email I sent them with the picture.