I rented an apartment from Brookline Management (aka Garfield Court Associates) from 1999 to 2000. The apartment complex was called Garfield Commons and was located in Clinton Township. Brookline Management (aka Garfield Court Associates) is located in Farmington Hills.
After I terminated the lease, I received a bill from them for damages totalling $775. At the bottom of the statement it read:
"If you disagree, you must respond in writing to this notice within 7 days after receipt of this letter. Otherwise you will forfeit the amount claimed for charges and/or damages."
And that is exactly what I did. I wrote them a letter saying that I believed that I was responsible for a portion of the payment, but not the whole $775. I never heard back from them. I told my dad about this and he said that instead of dealing with my dispute, they handed it over to their insurance company and it was probably taken care of. I never thought about it again. Keep in mind this was five years ago and never again did Brookline Management or anyone else try to contact me about this.
Recently, I was just turned down for a special promotion due to my less than perfect credit score. The transunion report showed a charge from a collections agency posted for $775. Brookline Management sent my bill to a collections agency without ever contacting me! They never wrote me back to tell me anything about my dispute. Five years later, and neither Brookline Management nor the Collections Agency has tried to contact me about this. So for five years, my credit report has suffered unknown to me because Brookline Management sent my information to a collections agency without my knowledge. No warning, no working out a compromise with me. No nothing.
I called Brookline Management today and I told them my situation and the lady I talked to transferred me to their collections person, Eric Smith. I got his voicemail. I left a message, called back and told the lady I needed to speak to someone immediately, and asked if there was someone higher up I could talk to. Conveniently that person was out of the office. She sent me to Eric Smith's voicemail again. I got mad.
I then contacted the collections agency. I told them the situation. They said they had tried to send me a letter back in 2001 and it came back return to sender which I thought was weird. They basically told me "too bad. You gotta pay it." and so I reluctantly did. I also told them to send me everything they had on file because I do plan on going after Brookline Management for this. The collections agency told me that Brookline Management was bought out by Garfield Court Associates.
I was reading the other consumer complaintss on brookline management on here. (I believe mine is the fifth. Pretty bad track record, huh?) and I noticed that one said that they had to almost get irrate with the office people when there was something wrong. This was 100% true for me too. We had a flood in our apartment and it was after hours. The washing machine upstairs was leaking into our apartment and our walk in closet was soaked. My room mate called up and they said they would send someone in the next couple of days. Couple of days??? Our apartment would have been majorly water damaged by then. I called them back, reamed them out and then they had someone there within 10 minutes. Our shower had a slow drain that they never could seem to fix, our pilot light would go out constantly and we would have no hot water. The answering service is rude, the office staff was rude, things were always going wrong. And then to top it all off - my credit score is ruined because of Brookline Management.
Do not rent from these people! They are unethical and sneaky. My credit report was ruined five years ago and I found out two days ago!
Anne
Brighton, Michigan
U.S.A.
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