Over the summer I used the services of a business called "Affordable Rentals" in Seattle. They claimed to provide available rental listings for places that accept poor credit, no credit, Section 8, etc. This business is a huge scam, and after a simple google search of their contact number (searching for their business name didn't yield too many results), I see that I'm not the only one who got ripped off. That one google search returned 22,200 results, the first several pages were all complaints on sites like usacomplaints.com, the Better Business Bureau, yahoo, etc. (Link to my google search: http://www.google.com/search? Sourceid=ie7&q=206-322-2055&rls=com. Microsoft: en-us: IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7ACGW.) Anyways, I found this 'business' on www.Craigslist.org.
This is their ad:
"Sick of wasting time and money on applications that are being turned down! I work with a TON of private landlords that are willing to rent to YOU, regardless of your past! My only requirement over here is that you have stable income (of course section 8 counts!). Forget about your past, lets talk about your FUTURE! So if you are sick of the run around, give me a call TODAY and lets get you moved into your new place! It takes less than 5 minutes to get approved! // 206-322-2055 ASK FOR DAWN"
We were promised the 'service' was as follows:
-We'd pay $250 for unlimited apartment listings
- $190 of which was refundable if we didn't find a place
- THey would run our credit report and provide their copy to apartment management/landlords to protect our ratings from multiple inqueries and to save us from spending more money on credit checks at each and every apartment we were interested in.
- When we found a place, the balance of $190 would then be applied to our deposit on the apartment
- the total fee for their services, was $60 - nonrefundable.
Unfortunately, we paid the $250 up front and didn't receive services as promised. They didn't make appointments for us to view apartments as promised. They didn't return our calls once we arrived in Seattle, which meant we spent way more money on hotels, while we still didn't have any apartments to look at. We finally spoke to someone, not the woman 'Dawn' who we had been working with and he said he set up appointments for us to see apartments for the following week "to give us time to settle in after our long drive" - even though Dawn was very well aware that we were coming from California, and needed to sign a lease withing 48 hours of arriving in Seattle.
As it turned out, only one appointment was rescheduled for us. We took initiative ourselves and started driving around and looking for apartments on our own. Late in the day we got a call from Dawn (from 11am the previous day) and we told her where we were, how we'd been doing all the work ourselves, etc. It turned out that one of the properties on their 'list' was one we had found on our own. We ended up having to pay our own credit checks ($35 each), no money was credited to our deposit, the apartment manager had NO idea that they were even affiliated with Dawn and this 'business'.
The apartment manager had never heard of 'Affordable rentals'. Needless to say, we got the apartment (with an extra deposit) and once we told the apartment manager, Tammy at the Atrium on James, what we had gone through to get there, she was nice enough to give us another apartment, that would be ready sooner. Once we got moved in, and utilities connected, I called Affordable Rentals and asked about a refund. Coincidentally, Dawn was never available and never returned any of my calls. I ended up speaking with Chad instead nearly a week later. I asked why they told us all of these things that she never intended on following through with. Chad said he didn't know what we were told or by who, but that he'd have Dawn call me back since I was working with her. I never heard back from them to this day.
And here we are, 9 months later.in my attempts to call before now, the phone just rang and rang or I was put through to Dawn's voicemail after waiting on hold for several minutes. The voicemail is generic, not with Dawn's voice or a business name or in any way professional.
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