Thursday, February 4, 2010

Peeved Renter

I absolutey HATE living at Goldstone Place Apartments, and I would hate for anyone to get stuck into an extensively lengthy contract the way that we did. It seems like a great deal at first, but after you sign up for their mandatory utility package, you're paying $749.00 a month for a one bedroom apartment which is a rip off for the quality of the apartments.

Starting with the apartments themselves, the floors are heated. That might sound like a nice feature, but I assure you, it is not; you can never control them, so they are always on. It gets SO hot & stuffy in our apartment, and every time we use the oven, it gets worse. Also, the walls are extremely thin. It sounds like our neighbors are playing basketball, and we are in an upstairs apartment. The toilet has been leaking since we moved in, and the maintainance has yet to fix it; I have to leave the vent on 24/7 just block out the dripping noise. The windows are so light weight that I sometimes have to double check to see if they are open. I hear everythinng through them, and if you're near them, you will feel a draft. The garbage disposal smells like rotten potatos, and I have tried everything from a lime to bleach to rid the air of the foul scent.

As for the management of these delapidated apartments, they are completely incompetent. They will appear friendly and willing to assist in the happiness of their residents, but when faced with any kind of complaint, they look at you in a most belittling manner and pretend that they have done all they can. On top of that, the letters they send out read as if fourth graders proofed them. I have quite litterally seen better grammatical analysis from middle schoolers.

Parking is atrocious. Unlike several of the other complexes I have rented from, Goldstone Place Apartments does not provide their residents with at least one free parking space. If you would like a permanent parking stall, you would have to pay ten dollars per stall; the only available uncovered spaces are almost always taken, and if you park in office parking, they will not warn, they will just tow. Then if you try to get an explaination from the management as to why they did not inform you first, they will laugh at your expense and say that it is not their responsiblity to alert you first. As you may guess, this has happened to us - this morning, in fact - and the management went as far as to say that they were unaware of whom the car belonged even though we were required to register our vehicles through the apartments upon signing our lease.

Furthermore, Goldstone Place Apartments expects you to hold up to your end of the renters' agreement, but they do not exercise the same courtesy. The lease explicitly states that a renter is not allowed to smoke on the premisis unless it is within the renters' own apartment or vehicle unless they be fined. I have not found this to be the case. On a daily basis, I am required to walk through a cloud of second-hand smoke; it is so bad that the air surounding the complex seems to be permanently tainted, and on more than one occasion the polluted fragrance of harmful toxins that is second-hand smoke, has entered my place residence. That is not only a violation of the lease, but a violation of Utah's Clean Air Act, and the management does nothing except send out an occasional threatening letter - sure they will send out a letter on something that is in conflict with the law and with the health of their resisdents, but they will simply tow your vehicle without discretion when it proves convenient.

My husband and I have lived here for just over a year now, and in that time, we have never been late with our rent, we're always courteous enough to keep our noise level at a minimum, and we rarely make complaints (mainly because we know the management won't do anything about our complaints anyway), yet we still hate it here. The way I see it, when the rule abiders are the ones with the complaints, something is seriously wrong. It has been my experience that the only ones who could love living at Goldstone Place Apartments would be rule-breakers, smokers, and pet owners. Since the management isn't going to do anything to reprimand them anyway, the residents can pretty much get away with anything. More than once I have been jumped by rather large dogs not on leashes (as states in the renter's agreement), I have almost stepped in dog feces left on sidewalks, there are cigarette butts everywhere on the grounds of the complex that accompanies a permanent cloud of harmful toxins left in the air from smokers breaking the rules on a daily basis, and it seems the police are visiting at least one of the buildings here as part of a bi-monthly routine.

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