Heed my warning, this place is not worth the nightmare of moving out! We actually loved our time living at Saint Andrews! The grounds...
Heed my warning, this place is not worth the nightmare of moving out! We actually loved our time living at Saint Andrews! The grounds are well-kept, the apartment was nice, and the staff were easy to work with. Alas, we were deceived.
We were sent a move out bill with the final payments, as is customary. The largest charge was for damage our cat did to the carpet which we knew we would have to and agreed to pay for. The other charges were for utilities and missing keys. We had questions about these charges as the utilities were for 2 months before we moved out and we thought those were paid for and about a month before we moved out we asked if there was a fee for not returning the keys and were told that there was no fee. We asked about the keys because one of our roommates left on bad terms and he wouldn't reply to us and refused to send his back.
When we received the bill it stated that we had 2 weeks to contact the apartment before it'd be sent to collections, understandable. We emailed the office (to have documented communication) within the 2 weeks and never received a response. We called the office and left voicemails and never received a call back. Finally we reached out to the corporate office and were finally contacted by Saint Andrews within 20 minutes. In this conversation we were told that the bill would not be sent to collections as we were working with them on paying it. We were given the email address and phone number of the manager who would be handling this and left several messages and sent several emails that all went unanswered. A few weeks later we got a call from a debt collector saying that the bill was sent to collections. We contact the corporate office stating that Saint Andrews has been impossible to reach and, lo and behold, get a phone call from Saint Andrews within 15 minutes. The woman leaves a voicemail for my husband and actually references the voicemails he left her saying "you said in your message that you'd be at work right now but I'd like to talk about the issues." So obviously they received our messages and yet never tried to contact us. I call back and finally speak to person, she sounded empathetic and gave me her contact information telling me that she could answer my questions, we'll work out the payment, and she'll take us out of collections. We email her and while she answered our questions about the utilities, she also said that she misspoke and wouldn't be able to remove the bill from collections and she wasn't sure who told us we didn't have to pay for the keys but they were wrong and we do. If we'd known that we'd be charged we would have pursued our roommate for his keys. We respond as such, stating that we are extremely frustrated that we now have to deal with collections because Saint Andrews refused to answer the phone, reply to emails, and return voicemails AND we have to pay over $100 for the missing keys because their staff was misinformed about the "long standing policy". What a shock, we never received a reply to that.
We also have documented proof that we asked in the first email (that was sent to the email address provided to us by the office as the best contact) how we could pay the bill because we'd move out of state and didn't know if the check could be personal or had to be certified or if we could pay online. We clearly indicated that we always intended to pay, we simply wanted to understand what we were paying for, which I do not think is unreasonable.
Also, I have never once asked to be compensated for their failures to communicate with us and to properly educate their staff though I do think it'd be well deserved. I have asked for an apology and for Saint Andrews to own up to their mistakes and have been met with silence.