I lived in the Wyoming Place Apartments for one year. Actually - I lived there for 11 months and 2 weeks. When I signed my lease, I received a discount on rent because there were some bright-red spots here and there on the carpet that looked like Kool-aid stains. Also there was a hole in a closet door that had been patched over, and a few other minor cosmetic things. I opted for a discount on rent rather than having them fix the stuff and charge me full rent.
Well, in January of after living there for about 7 months, we had a HUGE snowstorm and the room my kids were sharing flooded. The melting snow was pooling right outside their walls and coming under the wall. The carpet was soaked. I complained to the apartment and they came and extracted the water and cleaned the carpet for me. Shortly after this, some mold spots started showing up and paint was peeling along the bottom of the wall. Then it flooded again after another snowfall. They came out a second time and cleaned, etc... No more problems or mold that I could see, but they never fixed the problem with the gutters that caused this to begin with.
The Apartment changed owners during this time and fired the manager they had, and from then on I could not get them to do ANYTHING or to ever call me back. They taped a notice to my door that my rent was going to go up, even if I renewed my lease, so I then gave 30 days notice that I was going to vacate my apartment. I was not paying $100.00 more for a crap apartment that flooded whenever it was wet outside.
Before I moved out I called them to see what my total move-out costs would be and they said I just owed the pro-rated rent for that month since I was moving out halfway through the month. I paid that and on my move-out day, I had to leave the keys in their drop box because no one was in the office or answering the phone.
&Falsh Forward SEVEN Months&
I get a call from a collections agency called "SCO" claiming that I have an unpaid debt of $1,010.00 for an apartment I lived in in '06-'07. I asked if they had the wrong person, and he listed off some personal info about me that verified it was me he was calling for. He told me they had turned me in for damaging the apartment and not paying for it and also for breaking my lease. I told him I lived there for a year and did not break my lease and he said "Actually you lived there for 11 1/2 months, not a year." I told him that when I called them to ask for a complete breakdown of my move-out fees, they at NO TIME told me I was breaking a lease or that I owed anything other than the pro-rated rent.
On to the other charges: They said I had damaged the carpet beyond cleaning/repair and that I owed for full replacement of the carpeting in every room. And that there was damage to closets/cupboards, which I assume means the closet door that was patched up.
I told him that ON MY LEASE, it states that the carpet was damaged upon my move in. Furthermore, the apartment had flooded TWICE, damaging the carpet even more. He said he did not have a copy of THAT part of the lease, and that definitely sounded like a cause for dispute of the claim. I told him to tell the client that I am disputing it and get back to me.
In the meantime I dug up the lease, and it was not even a one year lease. Its ending date was six months after I moved in, and I had never renewed, so that means at the time I moved out, I had technically been OUT of my lease for five months. And they are trying to say I broke my lease!
He called back one more time and we got into an argument because he was telling me that I should just pay the $1,010.00 right now and then go and settle it with the apartments. I said I am not paying ANYTHING because I do not OWE them anything! He started saying that I was being irresponsible. I said "No - irresponsible is when you turn someone into collections without ever trying to contact them about the debt - not even once! Irresponsible is filing false claims about someone and then refusing to call back when they try to contact you about it."
I told him I would no longer be dealing with him in this matter and I would settle it with his client without his help. He kept talking, so I hung up. He has never called back.
I have placed numerous phone calls to the property manager, the apartment office, and showed up there once. They always say the person I need to talk to is not there at the moment and they'll have to call me back, but they don't call back. I sent copies of my lease, with the pre-existing damages highlighted, and told them to remove me from collections, and I have received no response. It has been over a year since I moved out of that place and the collection is still on my record, ruining my credit.
First Pacific Management was not the property manager when I moved in. They took over halfway through and are extremely unorganized, slow to take care of problems, and pretty much just jerks. When I lived there, several of my neighbors had complained about them.
I guess taking them to small claims court is my only option? But what chance do i stand against a giant property company? If anyone has suggestion of how to get this removed from my credit, let me know.
I am extremely frustrated.: (
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