Ram Partners, LLC, the parent company of Gateway Apartments at Northside Village in Atlanta, GA prides itself on "Simply Superior Service". Based on my recent experience at Gateway, that statement is quite inconsistent with the reality of the level of service, and the capability of the management and staff.
To make a long story short, my roommate and I went to Gateway on April 27th, we liked it and decided to fill out an application and pay our deposit. We asked to be on the 3rd or 4th floor in the first building, and to be able to move in on May 28th, as we had to be out of our current residence by June 1st.
From the end of April up until right before we were to move in, we were given incomplete information, and asked for documents that were never mentioned at the initial meeting.
(Note: We were applying for an apartment under the tax credit program, as we were recent graduates, and the leasing agent told us about it. That application process is a bit more involved than the regular application process. But at no time were we given a checklist of required/possible documents.)
The week before we were to move in, we were informed of a deposit amount, which I had been calling about since we'd put the application in. The week of move in, we had not heard from anyone in regards to our apt information, actual lease signing or anything. We contacted the office on May 27th, and were told we were scheduled to move in on June 1, and the leasing agent who we worked with was out of the office until the next day-the day we'd ask to move in.in addition to that, we were in an apartment on the 2nd floor in the 2nd building.
We went to the office to speak with the manager, who was basically unable to help us because she was new and asked us to come back the next morning when our agent would be working, and we could all sit down and talk. She never attempted to call him, being that we were scheduled to move that Thursday, and has to put everything on hold.
The next morning we went in, when we sat down with him, he assumed we were picking up keys. Again, she had not informed him of our issue and that our request had "not been met. Also, she didn't sit down and offer to help us figure out an alternate solution. Basically, we would have to move into that apartment and because of its tax credit status, they would not be able to move us into an apartment that would meet our requests.
At this point, there was NO level of customer service or problem solving-all things listed on Ram Partners, LLC's website as apart of their commitment to excellence. They basically were like "leave it or take it". Because of our original issues (involving the area's crime rate), safety, and the reviews of poor management (and their evidence in that instance) we decided not to move in.
We also asked for our application/holding fees back, as we were being inconvenienced, and when we filled out the application we pulled a prize box that said "no application fee"-which they said would be applied to our rent. They said no and that there was nothing they could do about it.
The last words from the manager and the leasing agent was, "Sorry" and "Good Luck".
This all happened on Thursday, May 28th, the day we originally asked to move in and 4 days before we had to be out of our residence. We had to change our moving arrangements, get storage space, and we spent those 4 days looking for an apartment. We also had to pay another application fee to move, and the earliest we could move is June 5th-due to apartment availability and our work schedules.
We have had to incur extra moving costs, storages cost, and basically move twice-from house to storage, from storage to apartment. We had to choose an apartment under totally different circumstances, as in where could we move the fastest and not maybe what we liked the best.
On top of all that, we are mentally and physically exhausted, and were pretty livid having to do all this because the apartment we choose clearly was not committed to "Simply Superior Service".
When we looked at other apartments and told the leasing agents there what happened, because they wondered why anyone would wait so late to look for an apartment, they were taken aback by the treatment we received at Gateway. They were not problem solvers, they were not communicators, and they were not committed to giving the best customer service. They were inefficient, inconsistent, and unorganized.
I also contacted Ram Partners, LLC directly by email and phone, and I have yet to hear anything back. My roommate called before me and she has not heard anything back either, i'm starting to think it is a company-wide issue of incompetence.
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