5 ms·

This is more or less the go-to standard in the usa. One property manager handles possibly hundreds in an association, or dozens of townhomes, and will refuse to

This is more or less the go-to standard in the usa. One property manager handles possibly hundreds in an association, or dozens of townhomes, and will refuse to speak to you directly, except through a maintenance request system. Its incredibly depressing

Octoth0rpe 7mo ago
But at least they're passing on all the savings to the renters, right? ....Right???????
AnotherGoodName 7mo ago
The electrical panel beeps an alarm constantly. Sent an email to the property management company. Guy comes over and presses a button to silence it for 24 hours. Rinse repeat for months on end. No method of escalation beyond the automatic replying inbox. I’m fine. twitch twitch Welcome to 21st century distopia!
- Eisenstein 7mo ago
  Whatever that panel is responsible for, that thing isn't working properly, its just set to be silent temporarily. Find out what regulatory body in your town deals with that panel's responsibility, contact them telling them that of the issue and say that you have contacted them when you submit your next ticket.
  - ryandrake 7mo ago
    ...and deal with that regulatory body's automated bot response. Customer service is bots all the way down.
    - jclulow 7mo ago
      I had some serious struggles with the delinquent landlord and property owners, and the dangerously incompetent builders that plagued our building in Alameda for years. While they were not always legally empowered to come and stop the skulduggery, the Alameda city council offices of planning and compliance were the only people who consistently and professionally responded to phone calls and emails and were available if you went to their offices. People complain about public servants, but at least in Alameda they were really good people doing their best.
      - idiotsecant 7mo ago
        Generally public sector employees are pretty good. Demonizing them is part of the movement to tear down the machine of state that we spent the last few hundred years building, so that a select few can grab chunks of the burning wreckage on the way down.
      - _DeadFred_ 7mo ago
        The Republicans have spent 40 years with their intentional policy being to make government services worse so that the Republicans can then point to that and say 'we need to get rid of government'. It's hard for government to function well when half of it is trying to sabotage itself. The fact it works as good as it does after 40 years of that is a tribute to public servants.
    - bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
      https://medium.com/luminasticity/services-of-illuminati-ganga-telephony-division-6944b6328408 https://medium.com/luminasticity/services-of-illuminati-gang... if you get a response from the "Bureaucrat Bot" you just got to fire up the "Annoy Customer Service Bot" as a counter-measure
- shakehar 7mo ago
  Call your fire department on their non emergency line and report this.
  - ssl-3 7mo ago
    Called the fire department's non-emergency line. Got a bot. The bot sent out someone who said the noise isn't a safety issue, and left. Called the police department's non-emergency line. Got a bot that told me it's a civil problem and that there's nothing they can do. Scouted out the fire department and chatted up the fire chief in person while he was walking back in after lunch. He was very concerned about all of this (finally, progress!) and called the management company while we stood there, but his call was answered by a bot that said someone would be out in less than 24 hours to silence the noise again. [...]
    - nikitau 7mo ago
      Great stuff. Would make Kafka blush.
      - egeozcan 7mo ago
        There should be a unit of dystopia called Kafka, these days. Renting an apartment from a management company should be like 3-4 Kafkas. Go from there.
        wholinator2 7mo ago
        Yes oh my god. I'm trying to rent right now and the application has me doing this fucking approveshield bullshit where they request every document you've ever had and direct access to your bank account before they'll approve that I'm not a criminal or liar. Whatever happened to bank statements?! Why does some random company need to know that my closest grocery store is kroger and i went to miniso for my girlfriend birthday, among hundreds of other small details of my life. And they weren't even satisfied with that, i had to send in a picture of my driver's license (standard these days) but the webpage opened up a qr code, to open on my phone which took me to the appstorr to download some other bullshit app to give every single permission and piece of my data to! I JUST WANT AN APARTMENT, I'VE DONE IT DOZENS OF TIMES, WHY ARE YOU TREATING MY LIKE I'M ON THE FBI MOST WANTED!
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  Call your building's insurance company. That will get you a very precise response pronto because they're going to use this as an excuse not to pay out if anything should happen to the building.
  - nradov 7mo ago
    How would a tenant identify the insurer?
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      Minutes of HOA is where I would normally get that kind of info. They have to justify the amount you pay and the insurance invoice is normally divided across all of the tenants.
      - nradov 7mo ago
        That only works for unit owners, not tenants.
        jacquesm 7mo ago
        It would seem to me that you then need to have a chat with a unit owner.
        nradov 7mo ago
        For apartment tenants there is often no "unit owner" and no HOA. Typically a single landlord owns the entire complex.
        jacquesm 7mo ago
        I don't know what you're trying to achieve with your endless stream of 'but' 'but', but in general if there is a problem you find the right door to escalate and you keep bugging them until they fix things. Resetting an alarm is going to look 'real good' if at some point the place burns down and for sure the building is insured somewhere and for sure that information is something you could dig up. If there is no unit owner and no HOA then multiple tenants will need to band together and get something going, initially we weren't talking about tenants at all, you brought that up and since then you've been tilting at windmills because nothing satisfies your needs. Obviously I won't be able to come up with workable scenarios for each new restriction that you impose because you can keep that up forever. I'm not in the 'oh, I will just give up because I can't be arsed to solve this safety issue' group, if it really is an issue - and I'm going on the assumption here that it is - then someone will care about that. The key is to locate the someone and then to state your case, and when one method doesn't work to come up with another one that gets you closer. Learned helplessness is not a solution to anything.
- MisterTea 7mo ago
  I have not heard of a beeping panel box before. The only thing I can imagine are some newfangle AFCI or GFCI breakers that are either nuisance tripping, tripping from actual faults or plain defective.
  - AnotherGoodName 7mo ago
    This is on the building as a whole to be clear.
- wiseleo 7mo ago
  I'd invite a fire marshal into that discussion. They'll know whom to call if it's not their purview, but electrical panels tend to be a fire risk.

Octoth0rpe 7mo ago

But at least they're passing on all the savings to the renters, right? ....Right???????

AnotherGoodName 7mo ago

The electrical panel beeps an alarm constantly. Sent an email to the property management company. Guy comes over and presses a button to silence it for 24 hours. Rinse repeat for months on end. No method of escalation beyond the automatic replying inbox. I’m fine. twitch twitch Welcome to 21st century distopia!

Eisenstein 7mo ago
Whatever that panel is responsible for, that thing isn't working properly, its just set to be silent temporarily. Find out what regulatory body in your town deals with that panel's responsibility, contact them telling them that of the issue and say that you have contacted them when you submit your next ticket.
- ryandrake 7mo ago
  ...and deal with that regulatory body's automated bot response. Customer service is bots all the way down.
  - jclulow 7mo ago
    I had some serious struggles with the delinquent landlord and property owners, and the dangerously incompetent builders that plagued our building in Alameda for years. While they were not always legally empowered to come and stop the skulduggery, the Alameda city council offices of planning and compliance were the only people who consistently and professionally responded to phone calls and emails and were available if you went to their offices. People complain about public servants, but at least in Alameda they were really good people doing their best.
    - idiotsecant 7mo ago
      Generally public sector employees are pretty good. Demonizing them is part of the movement to tear down the machine of state that we spent the last few hundred years building, so that a select few can grab chunks of the burning wreckage on the way down.
    - _DeadFred_ 7mo ago
      The Republicans have spent 40 years with their intentional policy being to make government services worse so that the Republicans can then point to that and say 'we need to get rid of government'. It's hard for government to function well when half of it is trying to sabotage itself. The fact it works as good as it does after 40 years of that is a tribute to public servants.
  - bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
    https://medium.com/luminasticity/services-of-illuminati-ganga-telephony-division-6944b6328408 https://medium.com/luminasticity/services-of-illuminati-gang... if you get a response from the "Bureaucrat Bot" you just got to fire up the "Annoy Customer Service Bot" as a counter-measure
shakehar 7mo ago
Call your fire department on their non emergency line and report this.
- ssl-3 7mo ago
  Called the fire department's non-emergency line. Got a bot. The bot sent out someone who said the noise isn't a safety issue, and left. Called the police department's non-emergency line. Got a bot that told me it's a civil problem and that there's nothing they can do. Scouted out the fire department and chatted up the fire chief in person while he was walking back in after lunch. He was very concerned about all of this (finally, progress!) and called the management company while we stood there, but his call was answered by a bot that said someone would be out in less than 24 hours to silence the noise again. [...]
  - nikitau 7mo ago
    Great stuff. Would make Kafka blush.
    - egeozcan 7mo ago
      There should be a unit of dystopia called Kafka, these days. Renting an apartment from a management company should be like 3-4 Kafkas. Go from there.
      - wholinator2 7mo ago
        Yes oh my god. I'm trying to rent right now and the application has me doing this fucking approveshield bullshit where they request every document you've ever had and direct access to your bank account before they'll approve that I'm not a criminal or liar. Whatever happened to bank statements?! Why does some random company need to know that my closest grocery store is kroger and i went to miniso for my girlfriend birthday, among hundreds of other small details of my life. And they weren't even satisfied with that, i had to send in a picture of my driver's license (standard these days) but the webpage opened up a qr code, to open on my phone which took me to the appstorr to download some other bullshit app to give every single permission and piece of my data to! I JUST WANT AN APARTMENT, I'VE DONE IT DOZENS OF TIMES, WHY ARE YOU TREATING MY LIKE I'M ON THE FBI MOST WANTED!
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 7mo ago
Call your building's insurance company. That will get you a very precise response pronto because they're going to use this as an excuse not to pay out if anything should happen to the building.
- nradov 7mo ago
  How would a tenant identify the insurer?
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    Minutes of HOA is where I would normally get that kind of info. They have to justify the amount you pay and the insurance invoice is normally divided across all of the tenants.
    - nradov 7mo ago
      That only works for unit owners, not tenants.
      - jacquesm 7mo ago
        It would seem to me that you then need to have a chat with a unit owner.
        nradov 7mo ago
        For apartment tenants there is often no "unit owner" and no HOA. Typically a single landlord owns the entire complex.
        jacquesm 7mo ago
        I don't know what you're trying to achieve with your endless stream of 'but' 'but', but in general if there is a problem you find the right door to escalate and you keep bugging them until they fix things. Resetting an alarm is going to look 'real good' if at some point the place burns down and for sure the building is insured somewhere and for sure that information is something you could dig up. If there is no unit owner and no HOA then multiple tenants will need to band together and get something going, initially we weren't talking about tenants at all, you brought that up and since then you've been tilting at windmills because nothing satisfies your needs. Obviously I won't be able to come up with workable scenarios for each new restriction that you impose because you can keep that up forever. I'm not in the 'oh, I will just give up because I can't be arsed to solve this safety issue' group, if it really is an issue - and I'm going on the assumption here that it is - then someone will care about that. The key is to locate the someone and then to state your case, and when one method doesn't work to come up with another one that gets you closer. Learned helplessness is not a solution to anything.
MisterTea 7mo ago
I have not heard of a beeping panel box before. The only thing I can imagine are some newfangle AFCI or GFCI breakers that are either nuisance tripping, tripping from actual faults or plain defective.
- AnotherGoodName 7mo ago
  This is on the building as a whole to be clear.
wiseleo 7mo ago
I'd invite a fire marshal into that discussion. They'll know whom to call if it's not their purview, but electrical panels tend to be a fire risk.