No matter what you do on this planet, do not rent from
Mills Properties, particularly its Park Val location. If you have any family or
friends who are looking for places to live, advise them against renting from
Mills Properties. If you have any enemies who are considering renting from
Mills Properties, and you take a perverse joy in their mistake, please consider
professional psychiatric help. No person in the world deserves the kind of
bullshit that Mills Properties unrepentantly produces.
I recognize that virtually anybody who has ever rented an
apartment anywhere has some kind of horror story associated with it. Perhaps a
case of damaged apartment components, or overcharging deposits, or something of
that nature. Hell, when I was in college, a house I was renting had a bathroom
door unhinged that we just kind of worked around because our landlord was lazy
and kept putting off having it fixed. This situation isn’t even in the same
stratosphere of utter incompetence as what Mills Properties offered. I’m not
going to argue that it’s the worst apartment lender in the world because I don’t
know all of them. But here is my story, and here is why no person you have
never met (provided you have never met an authoritarian dictator or an al-Qaeda
terrorist) is lowly enough to deserve to settle for Mills Properties.
In my quest to move out of my childhood bedroom, I looked
at a few different apartment complexes and one Saturday, I toured Park Val. I
looked at the demonstration room and asked a few basic questions. You said that
the apartments are all-hardwood floors—Don’t worry about the carpeting in this
room, it’s just the demonstration room. What municipality is this in?—Webster Groves.
I was surprised to hear that the apartment complex was in Webster Groves—Park Val
is literally right behind Shrewsbury Lanes and the route to get there from my
house indisputably involves entering the city of St. Louis yet I saw no sign
saying that I had entered Webster Groves. But whatever. The apartment seemed
relatively nice for the price.
I went to the apartment a few weeks later to go through
with an application. I went on a Saturday because I wanted to avoid going
during the week as much as I could—I get off work at 5 p.m. and the office closed
at 5:30 p.m., and while my boss is extremely nice and would have no problem
with me taking a short lunch and leaving at 4:30 p.m., I’ve only been worked at
my current place of employment for a little over three months and I don’t
really want to push it when I do not have an immediate need to do so. I went
and applied and paid the application fee. The next day, I was called and told I
had been approved, so I got my boss to approve of me leaving early the next day
while I went to go sign the lease on that Monday.
Two interesting things happened on that Monday. First, when
looking at the terms I had been given, the rent was higher than what had been
promised. Like, fifty dollars higher. I immediately pointed out the difference
and the facility manager immediately relented, saying that the price I had been
promised when I first looked was a “sale” price. Regardless, he offered me a
workaround deal—basically, I could have to pay $10 more per month but in
exchange, he would cut an initial application charge by $50 and then take $70
off of my first month’s rent. Fine. I’d pay $120 extra over the course of a
year and save $120 off the top. Makes no difference to me. The second interesting
thing was that I would not be able to sign a “lease” per se that day; it turned
out that the previous tenant was still living in the apartment after the lease
had expired, paying beyond the initial monthly rent because that person needed
some initial time to move out. Okay, fine, I figured. That person was said to
be moving out on Wednesday. After that, I could sign a lease. The next week,
the lease was signed.
Once the lease was signed, I started buying furnishings. A
large TV for my living room; a kitchen table and chairs; a couch. I hate spending
money en masse but now that the lease was signed, I had to get the ball
rolling. The long process was finally over and on March 1st, I would
be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor. On February 21st, I got out
of work early due to snow and I attempted to take care of the three main
utility-ish things I needed to do before the lease started. Step one was easy—ordering
internet and cable. Took about ten minutes with no issue. Step two was somewhat
more difficult—renter’s insurance. I was told that I would be able to get a
discount on it but I couldn’t get an answer at Park Val, so I put that off.
Step three was getting utilities switched over to my name, but according to
Ameren, the property manager had yet to verify that I was assuming the
responsibility.
On Saturday the 23rd, I got a hold of Park Val. I was
worked through the renter’s insurance process. Upon suggestion, I signed up for
a one-time payment for the year on the insurance—the last thing I want is to
have to remember to make a nominal payment every month if I don’t have to do
so, right? The manager said they would call on Monday to Ameren to get things
switched over. Sweet.
Tuesday comes around and I took a break at work to call
Ameren. Same thing as before—the property manager hadn’t called in. So I called
Park Val again. As was often the case, I had to leave a voicemail message. When
I hadn’t been called by the end of the day, I sent an e-mail. On Wednesday, I
got a voicemail around 9:30 in the morning from Park Val saying to call. Okay.
The manager wasn’t there when I called back. I usually like to keep my cell
phone in airplane mode early in the day to preserve the battery but I decided
to keep a watchful eye and/or ear on the phone, hoping, since the lease began
in two days, I could get the Ameren situation taken care of sooner rather than
later. At 11:45 p.m., Park Val called back.
“Hey John, um, do you think you’d be able to move in next
Wednesday?”
Um, no. Why would I be able to move in next Wednesday? My
lease is arranged for this Friday. I lined up for my furniture to be ready for
in-store pickup by Saturday. I arranged to have a friend help me with the heavy
lifting for that Saturday. I had the people from Charter coming in on Saturday.
This is a joke, right? It’s a joke—I’m going to stammer around a little bit in
response and then be told I’d been had there. Well, it turns out I had been had
long before yesterday.
The reason why I was being asked if I could move in next
Wednesday was because the previous tenant, the person for whom I had ostensibly
been waiting to leave the apartment, was
still living in the apartment. I had signed a lease for an apartment that,
for all intents and purposes, did not exist.
“I mean, no,” I said, “I can’t really move in next
Wednesday. I mean, I have all my movers mobilized for Saturday and we have
furniture and cable coming by and…”
“Look, John, there’s really nothing I can do.”
In some ways, this is true. In more ways it’s a heaping
pile of bullshit, but in the sense of “I would have to give a notice of
eviction”, it’s true. But the point remains that I had signed a lease,
effective on the 1st of March in 2013, to take possession of an
apartment in the Park Val complex. I had even been told by this same person mind you that I would need to wait until the
previous tenant had left to sign a lease. I then signed a lease.
“We can start eviction proceedings now but it could take up
to 90 days.”
Okay then, so what you’re saying is this whole ‘You can
move in on Wednesday’ thing is totally contingent on if this person decides to
change his or her mind and abide by the rules and by normal sets up
interpersonal decorum? 90 days sounds wrong too, but that’s really just a drop
in the bucket compared to what you’re saying so far.
“Look, here’s what I can do for you. For your
inconvenience, I can knock $100 off your first month’s rent. That’s all I’m
authorized to do.”
Oh, so for my “inconvenience” you’re going to offer me what
is essentially a prorated refund on the time I won’t be able to get in the
apartment. Go fuck yourself. Holy shit I just want to rail into this dumbass
right now. But I’m at work; even though I’m in the hallway I’m pretty sure if I
hurl obscenities at you, I’ll at the best get stares and at the worst get
reprimanded.
“John, are you still there?”
Yes, fuck face, I’m still here. It’s almost like being told
that apparently a signed lease agreement doesn’t count as a binding legal
contract in a professional leasing organization’s world would come as a bit of
a surprise to somebody.
“Yeah, I’m still…look, let me call you back, I need to get
some things together. Bye.”
I hung up and felt dizzy. I was angry, but I was also
confused. Like, how is this not over? If I signed a lease, how was that not the
end of the process? Not sure what to do, I called my mom. She was probably
angrier than I was, or at least didn’t make any particular effort to hide it.
Luckily for me, she was actually in the area at the time and went by Park Val
to figure out what was going on. I didn’t have the capacity to investigate this
entire matter by myself but luckily, she did.
When I got off the phone initially, I thought my landlord
was an incompetent idiot. Turns out my mom got to experience a new low in
customer service and general human decency. Now, anyone who knows both me and
my mom knows that we have fairly different personalities—I’m a pretty relaxed
person, in general (internet bluster aside), very much a go-with-the-flow type.
My mom will, for better or worse (and in the upcoming story, much much better), talk back. And sometimes this
leads to some, um, interesting moments. As much as I don’t really like the idea
of my mom fighting my battles for me, the results were so indisputably great
this time that I can’t argue against it.
My mom walked into the office and said “You just got off
the phone with my son,” and the landlord immediately went into defense mode.
When asked why a lease would be offered to an apartment that wasn’t available,
the response was “Well, your son was really insistent on getting a lease signed
as soon as possible.” Well, of course I was insistent on this—I wanted to make
sure I didn’t get swindled. It hadn’t occurred to me that there were steps
beyond signing the lease (but really though, I was pretty disappointed to hear
that, apparently, my merely wanting something to happen would make it so. Shit,
why did I settle for a mildly crappy apartment on the city/county line? I
should have made a play for the White House. Or at least M.C. Hammer’s. I mean,
that’s probably not that hard to get, right?).
The next question was “Have you done this before?” This is
the part where some of you will probably think I’m just telling a fictional
story but I swear to God on my mother’s life (and if it turns out this is a
lie, it serves my mother’s right for lying) this is what happened. The response
was yes. “Has this ever happened, where the person just doesn’t leave?” The
response, which is up there with that time Ted Stevens referred to the internet
as “a series of tubes” in terms of hilarity-amidst-horror incompetence, was “Yeah,
it’s happened a few times. It’s just a
risk I like to take.”
Oh, okay then. A risk you like to take. An interesting “risk”,
I must say—since it’s really not a risk to you. The person for whom it is a
risk, the person whose home is at stake, was not consulted. And I say this as a
person who goes to casinos more often than would probably be considered
socially acceptable—I wouldn’t risk money unless there was a chance of winning
back more than I put in. There is no advantage to this “risk” other than for
Park Val to get my money. But no problem—my mom took it a step further than I
had wanted. She went to Mills Properties headquarters.
They were a bit better, though this is a fairly low bar.
Basically, they won a 100-meter dash in which every other competitor had false
started. But most importantly, they gave some more information. First of all,
you know how I was told the apartment was in Webster Groves? Nope—St. Louis
city. This isn’t even really a big factor for me, besides the obvious of “I don’t
like when people lie to me.” And as for the 5:30 closing time which forced me
to leave work early? Welp, turns out the office isn’t supposed to close until 6. This was news to Mills Properties. They
tried to placate the anger by saying that, because of the lies I had faced and
because of the fact that they obviously could not uphold their end of the lease,
they could end the lease and refund the charges I had incurred. They were
supposed to call today, Thursday, to get things resolved. And they did.
I got a voicemail from the corporate office: “Well, the
apartment you had will be available on Wednesday, if you can take the day off
or if you can just move in on that Saturday, and for your trouble we’ll be able
to refund half the month’s rent.”
Same shit, different day.
So that’s where I am right now. I left a voicemail for them
saying that I was sick of being lied to, that their end of the bargain had not
been lived up to, and that I wanted to end my relationship with Mills
Properties. Apparently, this wasn’t good enough. I’d compare Mills to used car
salesmen, but no matter how much a used car salesman lied to you, I can pretty
much guarantee that you got some kind of car out of the deal. But even when
caught in the most unbelievable lie you could possibly fathom in a rental
agreement, one in which property is not only not available but even though this
was known already, it wasn’t brought up to the moving party until two days before the lease began. And
the process starts again. Four figures spent on furniture and general household
accessories that will now have to stay in my parents’ garage and my grandmother’s
basement until I can find an apartment not run by “people” that are such lying
sacks of shit. It can serve as a temporary symbol of a company I would never
recommend to anyone, under any circumstances.
This is just the beginning: There won’t be a rental review
website on the internet that doesn’t have a truncated version of my story on it
soon. If you have any other rental horror stories, please leave them in the
comments section. All companies who treat people like dirt should be exposed. I
don’t expect that any business’s first and foremost goal will not be to make
money—I do, however, expect a basic level of humanity and conscience. Rent
through Mills Properties/Park Val as your own risk—you’ve been warned. This
sort of thing happens there.
Don’t worry, people reading this who read my blog regularly—I’ll
go back to sports lists and references to obscure Oasis b-sides soon!
