DON'T RENT FROM ALLIANCE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

Okay, so I am sure some of you are aware of the frustrations we have faced with our apartment complex since October 2010. Well, today the crap hit the fan and Dave and I are SO DONE I wish it was June already so we could move somewhere else.

There have been many issues that have led up to this, but the main one is our neighbor next door who smokes like a chimney.

We have a young bachelor living next to us who is totally concerned with him and only him. He has friends over late into the night being loud (screaming), listening to loud music, playing his guitar in the bathroom while stomping his foot and singing (yes, this really does happen) and last of all and most importantly smoking inside his apartment. Dave and I are pretty positive the latter is happening INSIDE his apartment, mainly in his bathroom, for the following reasons:

1- Our kitchen and part of our living room area share a wall with his bathroom. We smell cigarette smoke CONSTANTLY when we are cooking or when we are doing something on our computer, which is right next to our counter area.

2- We smell the smoke the strongest when he is in his bathroom. We know he is in his bathroom because the toilet flushing, fan, shower and sink are pretty distinct sounds and usually mean that someone is occupying the bathroom.

3- He has been told by our current management and the old management to smoke in the designated "smoking area" which is his back deck. If he followed through with this rule we would not have fresh smoke coming into our apartment because our kitchen is on the opposite side of the apartment from his/our deck.

We filed a written complaint in the spring of 2010 with our old management and they jumped on it. They did an inspection of his apartment and told him to make sure he smoked in the "designated" area. That was the last time we smelled smoke in our apartment until October 2010.

We were so lucky to get new management last summer who are blessed with cabbages for brains. Dave and I started smelling smoke again in October, but kind of ignored it at first thinking it would stop. After a couple weeks of it NOT stopping we filed a written complaint to management. We asked that something be done because it was getting into our apartment again. We finally heard back from the dippy girl about a week later and said that she had CALLED the tenet and told him to stop smoking in his apartment and to smoke in the designated area. He of course assured her that he WAS NOT smoking in his apartment and would try to be more careful with where he was smoking so it didn't get into our apartment.

Well that was short lived. About two days later the smell started coming in AGAIN!

This time, in November, Dave wrote the complaint and said that his wife was 7 months pregnant and it was affecting my ability to be in my own home because it made me nauseous. He insisted that something more be done because the lease specifically states that no smoking is aloud on the premises. He asked if there was a fine that could be given or something to that effect. This time the girl only waited two days to call us back and let us know that she had CALLED the tenet again and discussed the smoking issue with him. He told her that he didn't know how the smoke was getting in because he was smoking in the designated area...

His statement is NOT true because on multiple occasions Dave and I have smelled the extremely horrible odor and checked our front deck and back deck only to find that he is nowhere to be seen.

Well as assumed, this problem has continued. Dave actually called the Alliance Property Management around Christmas time and left a message on the voicemail stating that he thought the next door tenet was smoking in his apartment and he wanted something done about it because the management on site was not doing anything effective.

He got a voicemail on his phone after the holiday break stating that the Alliance Management had called the property management and they were told that we thought he was smoking outside and it was getting into our apartment from the cracks in our front door and window.

Can I express through words how infuriating this is?! We never said we thought it was getting in through our doors! We said we thought it was getting in from the DB smoking IN his bathroom!

Ugh!

Well, we got home from our baby appointment this afternoon only to walk into our apartment and be bombarded with cigarette smoke. I insisted Dave call Alliance AGAIN and set them straight in their ways.

He was lucky enough to get directly to the Manager of Alliance property, some dork-wad named Casey Clark. Well Casey pretty much told Dave that we have to either buck up and deal with our neighbors life style choice or move. He did a lot of talking, trying to "smooth" over the situation, but Dave doesn't deal with that crap and called him out on it and told him he wanted a straight forward answer instead of the mumbo-jumbo bull.

Casey asked if Dave had any suggestions as to how the situation could be resolved and Dave suggested moving us to a different apartment that is not surrounded by smokers. Casey's answer was priceless, "because of the cost of advertising and getting your apartment ready for new tenets, we would not be able to afford moving you." Dave almost flew off the handle at this ridiculous remark and told him that they wouldn't have to do much to our apartment to get it ready because we have kept it nicer than it was when we moved in!

[the people that lived in our unit before us smoked INSIDE the apartment. When we moved in they had just re-carpeted, laid new linoleum and re-painted. Their paint job was a complete joke and you can still see the black smoke marks from the previous tenets cigarettes. I also took down ALL of the blinds and had to soak them in the tub for 20 minutes and then scrub them to get the yellow grim off of them as well as scrubbing all of the vents to get the hair and dusk out of the paint!]

The phone call with Casey was pretty much a joke and after reading the reviews on line about Alliance Property Managment it doesn't look like we should even count on getting any of our $400 deposit back because of the crook that Casey is.

So that is my long novel on the kind of people running this management company. If anyone knows of any apartments or condos where smoking IS NOT allowed and where the management actually respects the tenets, let me know.