I have very little good to say about Windsor Place, and much bad. Below is an account of my experience with the apartment complex. (This is mostly as a stress reliever for myself.)
We moved into Windsor Place in April 2007. In hindsight, it was the first reasonable apartment that didn't look like it was crawling with roaches and was affordable, and we should have kept looking. But we were desperate, that is, me and my sister-in-law. We shared a feeling of my mother-in-law wanting our heads on silver platters, and desperately needing freedom. So with unfortunately little thought and seeing one of their 'demo' apartments, we signed a lease.
The apartment they gave us wasn't bad. It wasn't the one they'd showed us, which I think is a horrible bait-and-switch tactic, but it wasn't bad. The fan outside ran constantly, unless you shut off the heat/air, which led to really horrific electricity bills, even though we were very conscious of shutting things off and unplugging them. None of the neighbors picked up after their dogs, and Windsor place did very little to try and enforce it. The neighbors also didn't keep their dogs on leashes, which hey, maybe that's fine if your dog is in the same weight range as theirs, but my 15 pound dog does NOT want to be approached by your slobbering 50 lb lab. For being underground, the apartment was miserably hot and stuffy. But it was livable.
Then, there was a roach outbreak in the building. Our apartment was spared, luckily, but I got to hear all about those who weren't. This was followed by a flea outbreak. My dog, who is unfortunately dry-skinned and prone to fleas (despite getting monthly treatment) was infested. I seriously wondered if we would EVER get rid of them, and had to watch her gnaw all the fur off of her paws. The lady in the floor above us didn't even HAVE pets (she was moved into the building after a fire took out a building that summer), and her apartment was filled with fleas. I started finding dead fleas in my cupboards, so I had to throw out food and put new stuff in airtight containers.
Oh, and about that fire. It would have been really swell if the management would have sent out a memo telling us what the cause of it was. We've heard everything from a meth lab to someone leaving a stove on. Thanks for the peace of mind.
One of our neighbors let their cat loose. I understand that animals get out, but this cat was ALWAYS out. To each his own, except for the fact that the cat kept bringing birds into the common hall and ripping it to pieces - it would take them days, if not a week or more, to clean up the bird guts. I don't know whose responsibility that was, but it was sickening.
THEN, our apartment started flooding, suddenly, without warning. The first time, it was after a very bad thunderstorm, and while it was a terrible night for us, it was understandable. After all, the apartment was underground, and stuff like that is probably a bit inevitable. However, it started happening so that every time it rained, our apartment flooded. Finally, something happened, and the apartment didn't STOP flooding. We had to get maintenance out, which was nothing short of pulling teeth, and then listen to them question us time and again if we had left our tub running, or overflowed the toilet. Finally, after two days of teeth pulling, they agreed to move us - and by that I mean, they got us an apartment and jackhammered up the bathroom while we were still trying to move out.
This new apartment, well, it was brighter. It had a balcony. Thus ends my positivity with that apartment. The carpet was complete shit. It had stains all over it, and cigarette burns. Maintenance was there while we were moving in, cutting holes and patching the carpet. Had we not been moved over in an emergency, I'm positive that they would have snagged the former tenants for carpet replacement. They would have had to - that carpet was gross! If you spilled water on it, it stained. Management gave us a few days worth of rent back, which I appreciate. This is possibly the last nice thing I have to say in regards to management, as well.
The heat in that apartment was a joke. There was a gas leak in one of the apartments, which we smelled from the day we moved in, 'til the day we moved out. Windsor place said that they would call consumer's, but I don't think they ever did. Our windows sealed SO poorly, in fact, that we had inches, literally, inches of ice on the insides all winter long. The bathroom door had been kicked in at some point, and never shut right. That balcony? It was pulling away from the exterior of the building, and there was NO WAY I was going to stand out on that thing.
These neighbors were worse than the last, as far as cleaning up and leashing their dogs. Despite being right next to the office, the rules were still never enforced.
Maintenance promised me within a week of moving in that they would be back to fix certain things. They never came back. The outlets were unsafe and never held a plug in them. I can't tell you how many times that darn alarm clock came unplugged in the middle of the night. Oh, and maintenance. They knew we had a dog. I said that they could come in and fix the stove in my absence. Yet, they refused to go in the apartment, because "dog would not allow entry" - but the dog was in a crate. Little 15 lb dog, in a crate, and you can't get in? Do you see why I didn't bother with maintenance after that?
They also never gave us a checklist for damages to the apartment when we moved in, nor did they ever give us an updated lease.
Despite telling us that we needed to give them thirty days notice, in writing, as to whether we would renew with them, they contacted us more than sixty days in advance, and told us that we needed to give them forty five days notice. I think. Maybe it was sixty days notice - either way - it was way more than the original 30. I don't REALLY care about this, it was just irritating, well, that, and the letter contained the word "reMARKable" about 20 times, to advertise that the complex is a Mark Management property. Tack-ay. They wanted to raise our rent to MORE than what we were paying in our original, and overall nicer apartment that we'd been flooded out of. Yeah, no way. We gave them their written notice.
Our lease was up at the end of April. We began moving out at the very end of March (shhhhh), though we didn't have all of our stuff out until the last day of April. We STOPPED living there about April 6th or so. Do you get the feeling that we hated that apartment, to get out of there so quickly? So all told, we spent about 5 months there. We busted our butts to clean up the darn place to the best of our abilities when we left. When we turned in our keys, we did just that, gave them the keys. They didn't make us sign anything, asked no questions, nothing. I had a feeling it was a little too easy. Darn me and my intuition of them.
We get a written bill in the mail a couple weeks after we'd turned in the keys.
New carpet.
Yeah, somehow I wasn't surprised.
Not only were they NOT giving us our deposit back, but they want(ed) $120 over that. Well, they had taken over $400 in deposits from us, and then they want $120 MORE? Now, see, if all that damaged crap had been from us, sure. I would have given them their money. But as I mentioned above, the damage wasn't FROM us, and if they'd had half a wit, they'd have realized that we couldn't POSSIBLY have done that much damage in 6 months, or if they'd given us a checklist, we could have indicated that the carpet was a disintegrating piece of crap when we moved in. We wrote management back on this matter and are still waiting to hear the results. For wanting money so bad, they're really not moving with any speed, which is fine, because I'm going to fight this tooth and nail if they insist on going that direction. Why? Because they're asshats, dammit.
Finally, windsor place didn't change the electricity back into their name until the 17th of MAY, despite telling me that they'd take care of it, and having no written evidence that *I* was responsible to do so. Here's the kicker: The electric bill for a month of us NOT being at Windsor place at ALL was higher than us living at our new apartment for a month. Way higher.
If they want tenants to do something, shouldn't they CLEARLY write that out in their "you're terminating your lease" letter, or have you sign something when you turn in your key, saying that you did that? Whatever. It's not like we're asking them to pay the whole bill, just to pay for the electricity that THEY used after April 30th when we officially turned in the keys.
Can you guess it? Yep. They're refusing to pay for it. It's our fault. So cool! Not only get to (supposedly) pay for them to replace the carpet that we didn't damage, we get to pay for the electricity and heat for them to do it, too!
Fucking asshats. We were GOOD tenants. We always paid our rent on time, we kept the apartment(s) in as good an order as we could, considering what we had to work with. We cleaned up after our dog and kept her on a leash which is more than I can say for the majority of the tenants there!
This is the thanks we got from them.
I will not, under ANY circumstances, live under a Mark management property again. I would rather be homeless, and I am NOT kidding. They are jerks with no sense of decency in dealing with their tenants. I hope, if you ever know someone looking for an apartment, that you will steer them FAR FAR away from Windsor Place. They are absolute crap and not worth the price to live there...and, by the way, their rent really isn't that competitive.
So, in summary:
Screw you, Windsor Place.
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