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When my roommate and I moved into the 60 Spring St. building last summer, I was excited to live in a cool loft downtown. I have indeed enjoyed living downtown, and I still think the loft is cool. But the management in the building is the worst I've ever come into contact with, and I've lived in numerous buildings in Columbus and Chicago over the years. It's clear to me that JDS Properties, which manages the building, does not care much about the rights or the comfort of their tenants. I don't plan on living there again next year.
Here are some of the incidents that made me feel this way:
Our dishwasher broke less than a month after we moved in, emitting smoke whenever we tried to use it. We called them and they told us it would take a month to get replacement parts - what? OK, whatever, so we waited a month, but it still wasn't fixed. When I called them about it again they seemed to have forgotten about the whole issue. They finally got around to fixing it about 7 weeks after it originally broke, not by getting new parts, but by simply replacing it with a unit from an empty apartment, which they could have done on the first day. Here's the twist: after fixing it while we were at work, they failed to call or leave a note, so we didn't even know it had been fixed until we called them for an update two weeks later. So, we went about 2 months without a dishwasher.
When we were shown around the building, we were told we had the option of renting out a washing machine and dryer or using some machines in the basement, which they presented to us on the tour as completely functional. We chose to save some money by using the machines in the basement. The first time I tried this, I put my clothes in the washing machine and suddenly water just poured out all over the floor. I tried to take my clothes out but the door was locked. When I finally got my clothes out, they were covered in rust stains. It turns out all the machines were broken and probably hadn't been used in years. I left messages at every number I could think of related to the company but never heard any response from anyone. They never made any offer to pay me back for my ruined clothing, nor to apologize for lying to us about the machines.
This spring, due to circumstances, we didn't park in our parking space in the garage, which came with the apartment, for more than a month. A few weeks ago I started parking there again. The day after parking there, I come down to find a "VIOLATION" sticker on my windshield and a note that said I would be towed in four hours - even though I was in my space. I moved it to a safe spot a few blocks away and left a message on their machine. I get a call a few days later from someone who tells me they noticed we hadn't parked there for a few weeks so decided to GIVE OUR PARKING SPOT TO SOMEONE ELSE without telling us. Thank God I wasn't towed, because trust me, if I had been, they would not have paid for it even though it was completely their fault, and I would have ended up with an ulcer.
A few months ago my check for the rent bounced, and I failed to notice that the money was not taken from my bank account. This was really stupid on my part, and completely my fault. God forbid this happens to you if you live at 60 Spring, because their late fees are ridiculous, the highest I've seen in any building. I incurred a $70 "check bouncing" fee, a $50 dollar late fee, and a $5 dollar fee for every additional day it was late. I fault them for failing to call me when the check bounced. Instead, they called me around the 15th of the month, adding an additional $60 or so to my fee. I ended up paying almost two hundred dollars in late fees, and they would not adjust it. Once again, I acknowledge the part my stupidity played in this episode, but how about some understanding on their part?
I haven't talked to other 60 Spring tenants about this much, but soon after we moved in last July we asked a guy in the elevator how he liked the building and he said something like, "it's OK, but the management are a bunch of a**holes." I was still optimistic about the place then, but I wish I had listened to him. Don't live at 60 Spring unless you want a constant headache from the careless, lying, callous management here.
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