19 February 2008 No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

I’m frustrated with my apartment’s management company. Yesterday, a closet door fell off its hinges as I was opening it: the screws were intact, but the wood in the door was stripped. The office promised to send someone out today if the maintenance staff wasn’t too busy.

Don’t think I’m helpless when it comes to this sort of home maintenance. If I wasn’t renting, I would have broke out the toothpicks and wood glue and fixed it myself. But my apartment complex gets a little uptight at the thought of anyone but the maintenance staff doing repairs. I can appreciate the fact that a lot of people would do more harm than good if the policy wasn’t in place. I’m willing to wait around for the professionals — after all, doesn’t part of my rent pay for these minor repairs?

Instead, I’m worked up by the solution that those ‘professionals’ implemented. I have a work order that they marked complete: they spent under three minutes in my apartment and ‘fixed’ my door by taking the same screws and screwing them back in as tight as they would go. We’re talking about 3/4″ screws holding on to perhaps 1/8″ of wood.

This is the same approach that the management company seems to take to most issues in the complex. They seem excessively fond of stopgap measures that will require more work hours and materials down the line, even in situations which would require perhaps 10 minutes to fix. Even worse, there’s costs in good will.

What I would do differently:

Say this was my house — I owned it and could do whatever repairs I felt necessary. I’m a big believer in ‘fix it right, the first time.’ I think basic common sense implies that the time I would have spent repairing that door would save me time and money in the long run.  It also saves me worries about other damages that door could create in a domino effect — maybe next time it will damage the wall when it falls or, knock on wood, somebody could be in the way. Call it frugality if you’d like, but I see the maintenance staff’s visit as a waste. As a business owner, I think waste is horrible — I want to hold on to every bit of money I can.

What I’m going to do now:

I’ve got a phone call into the apartment office. While I can predict what they’ll tell me (”Our maintenance staff says it’s fine, but thanks for your concern”), I’m still planning to inform them of my concerns. It’s not a big enough issue for me to use either of the options for really getting their attention that are at my disposal — moving out or refusing to pay rent — but I’m just that much more likely to look for a new place at the end of my lease. There isn’t really a great option for dealing with minor issues when you are a renter — it takes either a major problem or quite a few small ones to convince