I haven't posted anything in a few months, I know. I've been insanely busy, because everything in my life is completely changing. All of these changes are awesome, and it's all great, happy stuff, and I'll explain everything soon, I promise...but with even the best changes come stress, and I am about 30 seconds away from FULLING LOSING MY SHIT RIGHT NOW. So, instead of sharing any sort of news with you right now, I'm going to vent for a minute.
So, Jeff and I have been living in Cavalier Country Club apartments for the past three and a half years. It's not the nicest place in the world, but it's cheap and convenient, and the neighbors (who are about 85% Indian people) are generally quiet and keep to themselves. We figured we were just staying here until we bought a house, so there was really no point in leaving and paying more to throw our money away elsewhere.
I feel I should preface the rest of this by saying that we haven't been THE PERFECT tenants. We have a dog who barks A LOT, and when he was a puppy he caused considerable damage to the carpet in the apartment, and to our bedroom door (however, we did pay a $300 pet deposit when we got him). We haven't really been awesome at maintaining the place. I kind of lost interest in doing anything useful here after the second year or so. There have also been various issues with things that we never notified anyone of, and probably could have been fixed, but are now beyond repair. HOWEVER, none of these issues were remotely our fault, and the reason we stopped notifying maintenance about things was because our maintenance people generally SUCK. They come in without knocking half the time, make a HUGE mess and never clean up after themselves, they're rude, and they usually don't really even fix whatever it was they came in to repair anyway. So. We haven't been perfect, but we certainly haven't been the worst tenants either. We always pay on time, we don't bother anyone (except for the dog barking), we're relatively clean, we're polite, and we RARELY complain.
Before I even get into what I set out to rant about in the first place, allow me to provide you with a list of things Cavalier has done to piss me off over the years:
- They are constantly raising our rent. I suppose this is to be expected, but we were already way over-paying for a tiny one bedroom, one bathroom apartment that is completely outdated and in various states of disrepair.
- Not only are they always raising our rent, but the amount that they raise it has no rhyme or reason, and is completely unpredictable. At one point they allowed us to pay month-to-month with no lease for no extra charge, and then randomly jacked up our rent AND made us sign a lease. No explanation.
- The washer/dryer set in our building (we don't even have our own set) is pretty much constantly broken. And there's no way of telling when it is until after you've put money in it (oh, yeah...I also have to PAY to use the machines), so I'll usually have either already dumped detergent into my clothes to find out the washer doesn't work, or my clothes will be wet in the washer and I'll find out the dryer doesn't work. I called the office countless times telling them this, and it continues to happen. I ALSO told them that I've lost at LEAST $30 worth of change due to this issue and was told I'd be reimbursed, but never was.
- They occasionally test the fire alarms in the building WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE, AND WITH NO EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER. So you'll be sitting there minding your own business, and this terrifying alarm will start shrieking out in the hallway. There is no way to tell if your building is burning down or if it's a bomb threat or if it's signaling that there's a murderous rapist on the loose. So you sit there for 5 minutes wondering if you should flee or just sit there and wait for your life to possibly end, and after you figure out that it's clearly just a test, the alarm usually continues to go off for an additional 10 minutes. They also do this after office hours, so you can't even call anyone and ask what the hell is going on.
- The water in our shower is inconsistent to the point of ridiculousness. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say I spend 15 minutes regulating the temperature (or at least trying to) in the shower to the point where I can stand it. And then when I finally get it to an acceptable point, the water will turn boiling hot or ice cold (usually boiling hot) once every two minutes. And it doesn't happen for a second or two; it'll stay that way for about 5 minutes, and there's nothing you can do about it.
- There have always always ALWAYS been water leakage drainage issues in our apartment--and this is an issue we actually have maintenance "fix". It never works. If you let the water in our bathtub run for more than 20 seconds without turning the shower on, the bathtub will fill up and never drain. Our bathroom sink completely stops draining about once a month. The water in both our bathtub and sink leaks on a constant basis. The water in the sink takes about 10 minutes to heat up. You can't store anything under the bathroom sink, because it will get mildewy.
- Our upstairs neighbors' garbage disposal backs up into our sink. Always has. It used to ALSO back up into our bathtub (?!?!!!!!!!), but that appears to have been fixed. So there's pretty much constantly a layer of filthy grime in our kitchen sink, and there's pretty much nothing we can do about it, other than scrub it 15 times a day.
- The fan in our bathroom automatically turns on when you turn the light on, and it is LOUD. This is extremely annoying, and it was an extremely cheap and unnecessary way to install it. This is not the case with all of the apartments in the complex; I have been in others and there are separate switches.
Okay, so on to my current rant. Jeff and I have been planning to buy a house for over a year. (We've actually been PLANNING to buy a house for a few years, but we actually started the process of getting ready to buy a little over a year ago.) Early this winter, we decided that we were officially ready, and that once our lease was up, we were going to pay extra to go month-to-month so that we could buy a house this spring. Our lease was set to end May 1st (today, actually), so in late March, Jeff went into the rental office to ask them how much they were planning on raising our rent, and how much extra it would cost to go month-to-month. The girl in the office answered his questions, and then told him that we had to be out of our apartment by April 30th, because they would be doing renovations on our building.
WHAT!?!
Okay, so they're renovating. Not a huge deal. It happens. HOWEVER, it was late March, and this was the first we were hearing of this. AND!! this girl only told us this because Jeff HAPPENED to go into the office to ask her some questions.WHAT. THE. HELL. She told us that they had a letter set to mail that day, and that all of the details would be in said letter.
So. THIS meant, basically, that we would have to move twice. There was no way we were going to be able to get pre-approved, hire a real estate agent, find a house, and close in just over 30 days. No way. So our options were to get a different apartment in Cavalier, continue to overpay and deal with their nonsense, and move out a month or two later, or to move in with Jeff's mom until we found a house. The choice was pretty obvious, but it didn't change the fact that now we had to move TWICE. AND we'd have to rent a storage unit for all of our furniture. Awesome.
So, we wait for this letter. And we wait. And we wait. Eventually, almost two weeks had passed, and we still had not received this phantom letter explaining our virtual eviction. I began to question if, perhaps, the girl Jeff had spoken to had given him incorrect information. They couldn't very well kick us out of our apartment with zero formal notice. Finally, about a week later, we got the letter. It turns out, the girl HAD given him incorrect information, and that we actually had until MAY 31st to move out.
Okay, so good. We had an extra month. We got our asses in gear and started house hunting, and we actually ended up finding a house (more about that another time), but I still highly doubt we'll be able to close before we have to leave here. We'll still probably have to move twice. And now, since we've found a house, we'll have to move twice probably in ONE MONTH, and we won't even get to save money from living with Jeff's mom, because we won't be there long enough. Cool.
What really kills me is that they HAD to have known about this renovation for a considerable amount of time before they decided to tell us about it. This isn't something that a company of this size just does on a whim. ALSO, they renovated the building next to ours last summer, so it's likely that they've known since before that one was renovated that this one would be next. They decided not to tell us until the last minute so that we'd stay here longer and they could squeeze every last possible penny out of us. That's really fucking shitty, if you ask me.
BUT!! That was just the back story! That's not even what I'm pissed about right now! I'm pissed because pretty much every second since April 1st, Cavalier has been pissing me off. They won't just let us leave and be done with it. First of all, I suspect that they're going to try to charge us for a ton of stuff that our security deposit or pet deposit (which together add up to over $2,000.00) should cover (I have absolutely no intention of getting any part of it back). They've already come into our apartment to "check for leaks", and then subsequently sent us a letter stating that we owed them $90 for replacement vertical and horizontal blinds. Our shitty ass vertical blinds that have been here since we moved in THREE YEARS AGO and were required to keep on our back door due to building appearance code have been slowly falling apart for about two years. They're cheap and shitty; of course they're falling apart! One by one, the blinds would fall off...and of COURSE I'm not going to buy new ones; I hate the ones we have! I have no idea what they perceive the problem with the mini blinds to be. And after reading the letter giving us instructions on how we have to leave the apartment when we move out, I suspect that they're going to try to charge us for our refrigerator and stove, not to mention the carpet and bedroom door. This is ridiculous, as our refrigerator had to have been at least 15 years old when we moved in (and the stove was probably 30 years old), and just needs replaced because it's old and a piece of shit. I feel like they're going to try to say that we broke it, though, and charge us for a new one. Same thing goes for our garbage disposal, which hasn't worked in over a year. All of the appliances are just old and junky and need replaced, but I'm sure they're going to try to say that we caused damage to them somehow. And, as Jeff pointed out, the whole reason we have to leave is because they're renovating, which means the carpet, the appliances, and the STUPID BLINDS would ALL have been replaced ANYWAY!
AND!! Today we get ANOTHER letter in the mail, stating that on Friday they're going to come in and SPRAY FOR ROACHES AS A PREVENTATIVE MEASURE, 31 FUCKING DAYS BEFORE WE LEAVE. What that means for us is that we have to completely and totally clear our every single one of our kitchen cabinets, our bathroom cabinet, and our pantry, and we have to clear everything off of every surface in our bathroom and kitchen. So, not only do we have enough shit to do as it is because of these fucking assholes, but NOW we have to take ALL OF THE SHIT IN OUR KITCHEN OUT, put it GOD KNOWS WHERE, wait a day, PUT IT ALL BACK IN because we're still fucking living here and we can't just not use our kitchen/bathroom for the next 30 days, and then proceed to PACK IT ALL BACK UP IN ANOTHER 20 DAYS. And then we get to move our shit, hang out for like two weeks, and then MOVE IT ALL AGAIN. Why in the name of all that is good and holy can they not WAIT FOR US TO LEAVE BEFORE DOING THIS? I feel like they're doing this shit on purpose, just to piss us (me) off. And this is just on top of everything else that's stressing me out right now, WHICH IS EVERYTHING! I'm going to have a heart attack. Holy shit. I gotta go.
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