Me and my fiancee rented an apartment from Brownstone Properties, Inc in June. The first day we moved in, we noticed the bathroom toilet was broken (leaking water out of the back), the refrigerator was leaking from the back and had broken rubber gaskets, the kitchen sink was leaking, the central air conditioning unit was broken, and there were chew marks covered up by duct tape on the attic door. We had to call Brownstone about each of these complaints and they would send rude, disgusting workers to fix the problem in inconvenient hours for us. These appliances should have not been broken in the first place.
Several months after moving in, we would hear moving around in the attic at night. We did not make any connection with the chew marks until the moving around got unbearable and we could hear squeaking. One night we saw mouse pop its head out of our bathroom air vent, through the hole it had chewed which was there when we moved in. Brownstone took over a week to repair the hole in the attic door, we got no sleep that week, they and placed poisonous blocks of cheese in the attic for the mice to eat and die inside the walls. Nobody was sent to clean up the mice until we called, and even then the guy took a look and said he "couldn't see anything."
We threatened to call the health department about the main hallway as well. This was a four plex, so you would come in the main door and then go to your apartment. We learned from other residents that the bottom apartment had flooded and the main hallway was only dried and covered with mildew remover. The main hallway carpet had not been changed since and had been there for over 20 years! To top it all off, you could SMELL the mold when you would enter due to there being no ventilation in the main hallway. We complained numerous times and the only thing that was done, was that a cleaning man was sent to clean the top of the rug every few months... This did not cure the problem, only masked it, as the smell would return a few days later.
Our final problem came in the form of a water leak, the plug to the back of the toilet was broken and was pulling water for several days until the water company sent us a notice of a possible leak. At that time our water bill was 170 dollars, the next day a Brownstone employee came to fix the leak. We received out water bill at the end of the 2 months and it had risen to 348 dollars! Brownstone refused to reimburse us for their negligence, and added the entire water bill onto our safety deposit. So not only did we NOT receive ANY security deposit back for a SPOTLESS apartment when we left... But they are saying we OWE them 94 dollars.
I mailed my complaints to Jennipher Lucado, the president of brownstone, notifying her of negligence from them, and telling her I spoke with a family attorney and he agreed this was negligence on their part. I asked generously to void the 94 dollars as it would be the LEAST they could do after the torture they put us through. She did not respond until I sent another letter and her only response was "I did not answer because I have nothing else to say, you said you contacted an attorney and so did I."
They have numerous complaints and horrible ratings on multiple apartment rating sites, and have numerous complaints against them to the BBB.
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