| Sep. 22nd, 2006 @ 09:57 am Westside Villas / Equity Properties Rip Off |
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Current Location: Peeved-ville
Current Mood:  annoyed
Current Music: Kelis - Caught Out There
I don't know if anyone is a legal expert on rental law or if they have had experience with bad management companies but I am pretty sure something fishy is going on with Westside Villas, my apartment rental management company. When we first moved into our apartment my water and sewage bill was metered per unit, so I had a detailed listing of my unit's usage and I was paying about $12-18. About a year later after our lease renewal the management company decided to switch over to a community base billing system for water and sewage, so our bill jumped from what we were paying to around $45-55 dollars a month. That's a 3-5times increase in our water and sewage. When I called about it they said that they were subsidizing part of the water before but now that they are doing a communal billing it should be cheaper. I spoke to most of my neighbors and they all said they were paying a LOT more than they were before.
So what's going on here? I can understand a few percent increase because some loser is taking 3 hour showers and the rest of us are paying for it but to pay a few hundred percent more than what we were normally being billed is outrageous! But I just dealt with it, until now. In my latest water and sewage bill they have tacked on a "water boiler" fee of $23 and change. WFT is a "water boiler" fee. I didn't get a letter for this change in my bill and I don't think the city bills us for that. Now, a utility that used to cost under $20 is now costing us over $75.
I am going to call in today to dispute the charges but it's a little difficult when it's not the city utility company billing us, it's the apartment management company that uses a third party billing company to send us our bill. Therefore it's Westside Villas that is billing us for our utilities. They have several buildings in the westside and I've been told by them that they bill per building and not all the properties, as well the water fountain that the is in our building is not billed to us. Well I highly doubt they would be so kind as to take out that portion of our utilities bill for what is essentially a leaking faucet that runs 365, 24/7.
One of my neighbors tried to start a petition but the management company sent a legal letter for a cease and desist on collecting signatures for the utilities. It's like David fighting Goliath. Westside Villas and parent company Equity Property, has a lot more money and resources than any tenant does, so it's unlikely I'll make any headway on this matter, but I'll try. Only thing I could find during my research is that it is illegal for an apartment management company to make money off of a utility. I will ask for a copy of their bills and the formula they use to calculate the bills. |
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