Ryan’s friend M is “…very direct, let’s say.” So when her property management company sent Facebook friend requests to her and her housemates — after ignoring countless communications about various maintenance issues — Ryan knew the results would be “interesting, let’s say.”
related: Well, that’s one way to get your landlord’s attention
59 responses so far ↓
#1
Laina
Yes! might try that with My landlord!
Dec 3, 2012 at 12:34 pm rating: 23
#2
Meme
What I want to know is did they fix it?
The three likes makes me wonder if other tenants agree that they are useless and have similar issues with them.
Dec 3, 2012 at 12:35 pm rating: 47
#3
The Dude
The name is censored, but is that possibly “Blood Letting Agents”?
Dec 3, 2012 at 12:41 pm rating: 36
#4
Poltergeist
The only way to get my superintendent’s attention would to spell out a message in cigarettes and then lure him over here with promises of alcohol and free flannel shirts.
Dec 3, 2012 at 1:25 pm rating: 54
#5
Roto13
I want to see that Facebook post’s comment thread.
Dec 3, 2012 at 1:25 pm rating: 31
#6
Ely North
“You’re useless” might be one of the harshest (and funniest) things you can say to someone in a public venue.
Dec 3, 2012 at 1:32 pm rating: 26
#7
Lil'
This reminds me of my own property management story…I wanted to buy a house but I was stuck in a lease. Before I made any offer, I wrote to the property manager and she assured me by letter that if I left the apartment live-in ready, she would rent it immediately and let me off the hook when she secured a new tenant. She said I had been a great tenant and she was glad to work with me. I proceeded with buying a home, and over a week after my exit walk through, she had still done zero advertising – even though she told me it was in perfect condition, and even though she had my closing date a month in advance. I called her several times and she would either ignore my messages or say that she would get around to it. I sensed she was just stalling because she had changed her mind, so I took out an ad in the paper myself. I was bombarded with calls, which I forwarded all to her. She tried to retaliate by telling the owner that she had no clue that I had moved out, much less that she agreed to let me out of the lease. He called me at my new home wanting to know what was going on. He was very respectful, even though he was clearly angry with me for allegedly skipping out on him. Luckily for me, her hand-signed letter to me was proof. She couldn’t explain to him why she had not advertised, so the owner waived my rent himself and had a tenant in there in a week. Sometimes landlords suck, but luckily in my case, she wasn’t the top dog.
Dec 3, 2012 at 1:42 pm rating: 57
#8
Tracey
We used to live in an apartment that kept flooding and soaking the carpet. After one event, when they removed the padding and the carpet began to mildew and they were dragging their feet I threatened to break the lease per the terms about timely maintenance (I forget the exact wording, it’s been eons). Suddenly they showed up with new carpet! It was a miracle!
Dec 3, 2012 at 1:47 pm rating: 13
#9
John Doe
lol,
Awesome facebook comment in the snapshot,
i might need to try it when i have issues in my home
Dec 3, 2012 at 2:23 pm rating: 2
#10
lfytvelo
So now the landlord gets to see all the party pics taken in the apartment. Hmmmm. That’s one “friend” request I’d ignore.
Dec 3, 2012 at 3:27 pm rating: 9
#11
Islay
My husband and I still have several ex-tenants as “friends” on FB. I kept on one – the one that abandoned the unit with half her stuff still inside, the other half in our barn, left the unit a complete disaster, and owed us a month’s rent – for her amusing posts. Five years down the road, though, I’m happy to see that she’s celebrating s later, she’s just finished almost a year and a half of sobriety. Another ex-tenant that wanted out of their lease less than a month into it (we did let them) has applied for work at my place of employment several times. Not going to happen.
Yes, there are crappy landlords out there, but there are crappy tenants, too.
Our current tenant is great. He paid his rent on Saturday. We handed back half of it and said, “Merry Christmas”. Feels great.
Dec 3, 2012 at 6:22 pm rating: 57
#12
Ashes
I appreciate the directness and I approve of this message.
Facebook (and the internet in general) allows us a public forum to call someone out. Clearly you should attempt to deal with your issue in private first, and it looks like this tenant did. But if you’re getting the cold shoulder after a more-than-reasonable amount of time, hell yeah, call them out.
Dec 3, 2012 at 6:54 pm rating: 19
#13
Fabian
This is actually not passive aggressive but aggressive aggressive. I like!
Dec 4, 2012 at 8:42 am rating: 10
#14
kandijay
My landlord was a retired man who lived an hour away. One morning as I was heading out to work, the plexiglass window on the storm door fell out. I duct-taped it back in and called him on my lunch break. He told me he’d have someone there to fix it before I got home. Two years later I got sick of looking at the duct tape and fixed it with silicon caulk. I also fixed the leaking tub (which he told me was because we were showering too long), the air conditioning unit that had a wasp’s next in it (“Just replace the filter!”) and a broken light fixture in the kitchen. When I moved, he whined that I was his best tenant and it should have been in my lease that I find someone to replace me when I moved. Right, like I’d wish that on anyone.
My favorite part was the day I moved out, he had the back door replaced because of the window, which had been broken for four years by that point.
Dec 4, 2012 at 1:22 pm rating: 9
#15
ninjaduck
Why do some landlords take so long to fix issues with tennants? Are they too busy living the lavish life of a celebrity or are the REALLY that lazy? Is a respose so much to ask?
Dec 4, 2012 at 2:57 pm rating: 2
#16
Tanya
I’m actually friends with two tenants in my building on Facebook. I was friends with them while I was the manager and I’m friends with them now as the assistant/backup manager. I think it’s great to connect to tenants in this way, it creates a more open relationship where both parties are seen as human beings, instead of annoyances and automatons. Of course, this only works if your manager is live-in (stop renting from property management firms, they suck compared to live-ins).
As for why it sometimes takes so long to get things done:
1. The company called in to repair keeps rebooking, but the building owner is away and other companies want her pre-authorization before coming in.
2. The building owner is stalling. Remember, in most cases your manager is actually just the messenger boy.
3. You’re frequently late paying your rent, have loud parties, have a messy place, and/or the building manager wants to get rid of you.
4. The manager has just returned from a few days off due to the flu and now has to catch up on three days of work plus tackle the current day. It’s not like we’re sitting around doing nothing all day, we do actually Do Things and there’s more people in an apartment building than just yourself.
5. You rented from a property management firm, dumbass.
And as somebody previously mentioned, it’s not just crappy landlords, there’s also crappy tenants. If you act like a crappy tenant, expect a crappy landlord in return. And stop asking for a new paint job when you’ve only been living there for three years or smoke like a chimney – not happening.
Dec 4, 2012 at 6:06 pm rating: 1
#17
raichu
The “you’re useless” was way over the top. Other than that, team “note”-writer. Landlord should be doing what they’re paid to do.
Dec 5, 2012 at 11:37 am rating: 4
#18
Danii
I wish my old landlord had a facebook page, because I would have loved to call him out publicly– The main reason being that he knew the heat was out in the entire building last winter and never bothered to fix it. I ended up pretty much living in my bed with the space heater next to it. Thankfully, my lease was up in January anyway.
Dec 5, 2012 at 10:28 pm rating: 7
#19
Kate
I love this. My current landlord and real estate agent are pretty good, but my last apartment – not so much. During a storm in my old place, the pipes bust and everyone on the top three floors ended up with flooded apartments. Most of the others got their carpets cleaned ASAP, but my landlord and body corporate decided to dispute whose responsibility it was for six months, during which time I lived in an apartment with wet, smelly carpets (the place only had one window so it was hard to air out). Then when I moved out they tried to dock my bond for damaged carpets!
Dec 9, 2012 at 6:15 pm rating: 3
#20
Amanda
This is hilarious. I used to have a landlord that used to ignore my texts when something was broken and neded fixing. I guess I should have tried this.
Dec 9, 2012 at 9:13 pm rating: 0
Comments are Closed