As the spring semester comes to an end, students will begin to pack up their dorm rooms and get ready to go home for the summer.
For some of these students in the dorms, the end of the spring semester means another thing; it’s time to find a roommate and a place off campus to rent for the next semester.
For those looking to live off campus, it’s a great thing. There is a lot of freedom that comes with it as well as a lot more responsibility.
With that being said, I think I should also note, you need to be careful about who you rent from. Take my experience for example.
I rent from a place that we’ll call Company F. Now Company F is located somewhere in the Rimrock area of Grand Junction.
The place my girlfriend and I rent is in Clifton. I found this place because I know who the previous tenant was and so, I got to see this nice townhouse before he moved out.
When we filled out the applications, we originally wanted to take over the lease. This was in the beginning of July.
I think it should also be noted that Company F doesn’t rent to college students without a guarantor. So even though I was almost 26 years old, a Veteran student and made almost four times what they were asking for in rent, I still had to call my mom and ask her to sign as a guarantor for me.
So, after a week, our applications were approved and my friend was moving out. Company F couldn’t give us a move in date.
It literally took calling almost every day in August for them to finally tell us we could move in the Friday before the semester starts. Six weeks after we had been approved mind you, and we found this out the week of.
Now if you’re thinking, that’s not that bad, it’s actually worse than you think. We were originally supposed to take over the lease. Every time I called about keys Company F said they were fixing one minor thing and I should have keys in a day or so.
I MOVED OUT of my last apartment at the END of July (words capitalized for significance here) because they said it will be ready. Three weeks of commuting with a laundry basket full of clothes and pillows and blankets in my car.
Anyways, the day we move in, somehow the swamp cooler that was working earlier that summer was turned off and blowing out hot air when we got there. With it being in the nineties in August, it was hotter in the house.
We had to endure two days of moving in an entire house of furniture with it being extremely hot. Not to mention this was right before the fall semester started so we couldn’t just hold it off.
After moving in and submitting a maintenance request to Company F, our swamp cooler was fixed. There came another problem though, the water was overflowing so much that we had our own personal waterfall in the backyard.
Another maintenance request had to be submitted.
To this date we’ve actually submitted seven different maintenance requests (more than seven actually, but if it is for the same thing then it counts as one).
We had to submit one for spiders because we had an abundance of black widows and such, we had to submit one for mice and we had to submit one for the locks on the doors.
The worst was by far the issue with the heater. That took over a dozen different maintenance requests.
They would simply come in, relight the pilot light and leave. House would get to a nice temperature, heater would shut off and the pilot light would go out again.
I can relight the pilot light, that’s not the problem. The problem was it was getting extremely cold in November and you would wake up at 4:00 a.m. with the temperature in the house below 50 degrees.
So the problem with the old heater was that there were many broken parts, and when they were replacing them, they realized that the whole thing just needed to be replaced.
Another problem they found when replacing the heater, was that there were also wiring issues that could have been dangerous as well.
The heater problem is fixed, but it is still an open maintenance request that we have, here’s why.
When I got called and asked for keys after they changed the locks I asked why they didn’t have keys. Well apparently Company F doesn’t own the buildings, the owner of the buildings isn’t even in the state.
So when we have a maintenance request go to Company F, they send that request to the owner. The owner then sends his own maintenance people and they report to the owner only. The owner then decides if he wants to tell Company F if the problem was fixed or not.
Company F has since decided that if they don’t hear anything, the problem is fixed. If we send in another maintenance request, the problem was not fixed.
It’s a broken system that fails horribly in communication. Just remember, if there is a problem where you’re living, speak up about it.
We currently have four months left on our lease and have decided that we will move somewhere else after it is over.
If there is anything else to take away from in this article, be careful about which company you rent from and whatever lease they have you sign.
