Post-Apartment-ocalypse

by | Oct 29, 2008 | Aggravation

Say that 10 times fast.

This morning, looking through my mail, I found a letter from the apartments we just moved out of. We were expecting a return of our deposit, so I hurridly opened it. Instead of a check, I found a bill. A bill that makes no sense.

Confused I called the apartment management office and asked what on earth they were thinking. They rudely said that if I had a problem I could call corporate and take it up with them. Then they hung up. Saying I’m glad we’re no longer there is a bit of an understatement.

So, I call corporate in Ohio and get some random persons voicemail. I leave a message and I’m still waiting to here back from them.

Now, before I drop some numbers on you, my faithful readers, there’s a few things you have to realize. First, is that everything at that apartment is prepaid at the beginning of the month. So, there should be no “post-month” charges. Also realize that we left on good terms with these people so, at the moment, there’s no reason to believe they’re actively trying to screw us.

So, let’s see… where to start? There are three sections to our bill. “Ledger Balance”, “Deposits” and “Additional Charges”.

Let’s start with “Ledger Balance”, which, in this case, is a fancy way of saying “utilities”.

Trash 08/12/08-9/30/08 : $8.07
Trash “thru 8/11/08” : $5.00
Water 08/12/08-9/30/08 : $32.26
Water “thru 8/11/08” : $20.00

So, now given that I paid rent in August and September, I fail to see why I’m being charged for ANY of that. But, lets for the moment assume that we were not paying forwards, but backwards. That our September rent check was paying for August water. Let’s stay with that for a minute. That would mean that I already paid the charges for “thru 8/11/08” completely. So, I don’t know why those are listed. Then, what’s with this month-and-a-half crap? 8/12-9/30? Huh? Let’s change that to 9/1-9/30 and MAYBE we’re on the right track. So, strike two of the four and adjust the other two and we’re down from $65.33 to $25.83, or $25, which is what we paid each month for water and trash. That almost makes sense.

Then, our deposit it listed at $150. I’m pretty sure it was more like $300, or half the first months rent, but I’ll let that slide for a moment.

Now we get to “Additional Charges”. My favorite part. This is the part where they tack on crap that they feel like because you’re not living there any more to dispute it.

Carpet Repair: $60
Extra Cleaning: $45
Extra Painting (10×10 room): $50

Let’s start with Carpet. I’m actually willing to concede that. We lived there for three years, in a first floor apartment, that was 100% carpet. Obviously, walking in from the outside would make the carpet dirty. I get that.

Extra Cleaning however, is flat out BS. We had our things moved out a week before our lease was up and spent an entire week going over there in the evenings to clean it. There was not one single thing in that apartment that was dirty. Nothing.

Then we get Extra Painting. Now, the “10×10 room” part is kind of a clue here. There are only two rooms larger than 10×10 in that apartment. The master bedroom and the living room. The master bedroom was spotless. No need to paint. The living room had an “accent wall” which was a different color. When we moved in back in 2005, it was actually listed as a “feature” on the paperwork. We picked the color and the apartment maintenance crew, before we moved in, painted the wall for us. It’s listed on our original lease. I’m sorry, but I’m not paying them to repaint the wall. That wasn’t part of the deal. You offer someone a free wall to put paint on, you don’t make them pay for it later on. That’s just bullshit.

So, out of those, I’ll concede the $60 for carpet. $60+25=$85 in “fees”. $150-85=$65. They owe ME $65. They claim I owe THEM $70.33.

That simply isn’t going to happen. I’m not paying them a friggin penny.

What worse is that they flat out refused to do a walk-through when we left. It was post-hurricane and they said they were too busy and would get to it later.

To me, that says that they’re accepting the apartment “as is” and they forfeit any rights to make damage claims later on.

I still haven’t gotten a call back. I can’t wait till I do. This should be fun.

The Light after the Darkness

by | Oct 29, 2008 | Culture, Travel, Web

When the U-Verse technician told me yesterday I could “get to the TV stuff online” I assumed he meant I could see channel listings. Of course, the downside was having to endure a trip to att.yahoo.com to do it. I didn’t link that because no one should ever have to see a “portal”  page like that unless they’re being subjected to some sort of web 2.0 tourture chamber. Everything that could possibly blink does, and then it slides, jumps, talks, dances, rotates and eventually bends your browser over and has it’s way with it. It’s not good.

However, there is some light at the end of the browser rape tunnel. Once there, a U-Verse customer can find another link, one to a shiny golden place of web goodness. A place that lets you forget the pain you just went through.

Through some bizarre collaboration between the internet gods, you can, actively, through this second website, access your DVR at home. All because Yahoo and SBC teamed up. AT&T re-borg’ed SBC, and thus Yahoo, and now you can access your AT&T hardware via Yahoo’s homepage.

You have access to it’s recorded shows, it’s schedules, it’s settings. More importantly, you have access to all this via an interactive channel guide. Meaning, you can browse the TV listings for weeks in advance, select a show, set the DVR to record and then come home to find that indeed magic has taken place.

Oh, and did I mention it’s cellphone/PDA/iPhone compatible? Seriously, that’s a cool feature.

Lastly, as I mentioned yesterday, after my U-Verse install I took it upon myself to drop my own cable down a couple walls. Something that I succeeded in, albeit at the expense of skin and the fiberglass insulation that decided to cover it. I can’t really blame it though, I was invading it’s natural habitat. Something I’m not likely to do again anytime soon. That said, the mission was a success. Fiber to my Xbox makes me a very happy person.

Game on.

Fiber is good for your diet

by | Oct 27, 2008 | Culture, Tech

The U-Verse install just wrapped up and I have to say I’m fairly impressed. The techs showed up at 10am, ran a whole new line from the pole, did 3 wall drops and a couple new outlets and wrapped it up before 3pm. Everything seems to be working perfectly. TV’s and the DVR took under 10 minutes to get up and running. The internet connection was soon after. I just ran a bunch of speed tests and I’m getting a completely steady and rock solid 9.5-10mbps down 1.3-1.5 up. Crazy.

So, now that the tech has left, I’ve gotten my box of Cat-5 out of the closet and I’m going to attempt my own wall drop so I can have a direct connection from the modem to the Xbox. Wish me luck!

Matt out

Fiber to my curb

by | Oct 9, 2008 | Personal

Throwing caution (and non-installable cable) to the wind, I signed up for AT&T’s new fiber U-Verse service this week. As you may remember from last time, a tree had fallen on my potential for cable internet and the estimate to get everything in the neighborhood back up and running was the end of the month. That just wasn’t going to work. It was too expensive to begin with and not having it for a whole month wasn’t sitting well with me. With freakish timing, mere minutes after finding out the diagnosis from Comcast, a rep from AT&T called saying U-Verse was now available in our neighborhood. That’s really all it took.

The install is scheduled for the week of the 20th, but it wasn’t all magic pie and fairy dust getting there. I had to go through four different customer service reps, a couple of calls to a manager and a couple of revisions to my package to get to that point. Seems there was a sticking point about my credit card. I don’t have one. I don’t believe in them, as a principle. They required one for the install, as a security deposit option for the hardware. I gave them my debit card number and apparently they can tell it wasn’t a non-bank issued card. I went round and round with them about it. They kept saying that a “real” credit card is more secure and a bank card isn’t. I pressed the managers on the fact that my “bank card” is in fact a real card that I get cash back on, get points from and has exactly the same consumer protections as a “real card.” Eventually I won and thus the service was scheduled.

What amazes me is the speed and depth of the package. Compared to the Comcast package, it’s really quite stunning. Here’s the break down:

Channels:
Comcast: 72, including local
AT&T: 200, plus local

Internet:
Comcast Cable Modem: 5mbps down, 384k/up
AT&T Max Elite: 12mpbs down, 1.5mbps up

Phone:
Comcast: VoIP, which kills bandwidth
AT&T: Regular phone line, not over the fiber

DVR:
Comcast: 1 DVR per TV, extra charge
AT&T: 4 Stream DVR. 1 box, 4 TVs, 4 recordings at once.

Price:
Comcast: $99 for 6 months, plus DVR charge. $110 now, $160 after.
AT&T: $89 for 12 months ($10 disc on internet). $99 after.

Bonus:
Comcast: wanted to charge $35 to “move” the service.
AT&T: $200 VISA gift card for switching!

Bye Bye Comcast. Hello sweet sweet fiber to my curb!

Of course getting connected again is only part of my house projects. I also hit up Lowe’s for about $100 worth of supplies yesterday.

I replaced a shower head, extended a gutter drain spout, got about a million random light bulbs, got a new dryer vent hood to keep all the little critters out of the dryer (old one broken in the storm), got replacement pieces for things like light fixtures, the mailbox and some furniture and I still have to go back for more later. I’m actually kind of enjoying it. Random patch jobs and little repairs are about the extent of my handiness. I’ll need to defer to the experts (father and father-in-law) to show me the way in terms of installing things like ceiling fans and light kits. But I did hook up the gas washer and dryer, so, really, how hard could that stuff be? lol.

So much to do, so little time.