State law here says that landlords must give at least 48 hours’ notice before entering a tenant’s unit if it’s not an emergency. My apartment management always gives notice at the end of the day for the morning two days in the future, so it’s more like 40 hours’ notice. The notice references the 48 hours law, so it’s not like they don’t realize.
They also enter the units too often for no good reason, but I guess there’s not much I can do about that. But what bugs me the most is that for these pointless entries (and for everything else, such as testing the building fire alarm which means it’s going to go off for like 15 minutes straight, turning off the water for the building for a couple hours, etc.) they give a time window of the entire day, 9am-5pm. I see no reason they couldn’t usually give a window of half the day at most. It can’t be that difficult.
Anyway, would you complain about any of this or am I just being petty?
Can you start by asking? Just “I need a little more time for notice, can you give me the full 48 hours I am entitled to”? And same with the fire alarm, though I don’t think you’ll win that one “Wow, that’s really annoying - does it really always have to be for 15 minutes at a time?” Both said politely and in an non-aggressive tone of voice. It could be that like TinyInfinity no one has complained yet.
You’ll never ever ever win the water one. Well, maybe you could go to your town council, if they are good.
I don’t mean that I don’t want them to turn off the water or test the fire alarm, I just mean they should be able to give a smaller window of time when they’re going to do it, so people don’t have to spend the entire day wondering. I understand it could occasionally be out of their control such as if they need the fire department to come test the alarm, but with at least most of these things, I can’t believe they couldn’t easily schedule it better.
I hate confrontation so I don’t want to complain, but I especially don’t want to if maybe I’m just being petty. I was thinking about taping the notice back on my door today and writing on it that they can enter in the afternoon since that’s when they delivered the notice on Tuesday, but that might seem passive-aggressive.
Are you irked because you haven’t had the proper amount of time to plan for the inconvenience and you actually have something going on that will conflict with their intrusion…or is it just the principle of the matter?
If it’s the latter, then you’re just being difficult. You chose to rent an apartment, where these types of intrusions are necessary. In exchange, you don’t have to do the maintenance or pay for the replacement of appliances that have broken down etc.
WTF, Omar? Seriously, you’re fine with being told “Hey, sometime today between 9 and 5 we’re going to come into your home” all the time? When you know they could just say “Sometime this morning before 11”? Sometimes a girl likes to have sex on the kitchen table, you know?
Well isn’t that how the plots of all those 70’s porn movies went? Girl is on the kitchen table jilling her self off, when in comes the maintenance guy to check the fire alarm. Chicken chicken brown cow!
But suppose they’re doing some kind of one day job that requires an apartment-by-apartment check. They give you 48 hours notice that they’ll be there “some time before 11”, but they run into a snag in another apartment that puts them a couple of hours behind schedule. In that case, I don’t think it’s reasonable for one tenant to say “too bad, you had your window and you missed it” and insist on setting up a whole new time 48 hours in the future.
An 8 hour gaff as to notice to enter? I think petty is too harsh a term, but let me just say: Pick and choose your battles.
Sometime between 9 and 5? Keep in mind that the maintenance team has several units to inspect. And not all of those inspections go with out problems. This translates to a maintenance guy may spend 2 minutes in one apartment with out problems and then very next apartment he may have to spend 30 minutes due to several problems.
So the practicality of it all makes it damn near impossible for them to say: "We’ll be in your unit at exactly 11:35.
15 minutes to test the fire alarm? I would politely let your office know what those guys are doing. Maintenance guys don’t always give a shit if they annoy you. Management however has a bigger stake in your happiness.
On this issue, they are likely to be on your side. But that doesn’t mean you will win. Management could investigate the matter and find out that it IS necessary to let the thing rattle on for 15min at a time.
I’ve lived in apartments all my life. Once, my SO went away for a week. So, while he was gone, I decided to live like a slob. Why the hell not? I do most of the housecleaning, so I thought it would be fun to completely let it go. I figured I’d clean it all Saturday before he came home Sunday. I like cleaning, so i didn’t mind.
I never left any food anywhere but I admit there was underwear in the hallway and clothes on the floor, and I never make my bed anyway. And I didn’t wash the dishes as often as I needed to. I mean, it was FEBRUARY so nothing was stinky.
And then one day I came home to a notice on my bathroom saying the maintenance guys had come in. They’d come to the wrong apartment - I hadn’t put in a maintenance request at all. I was mortified.
Such are the hazards of apartment living. It was just a mistake, though. HOWEVER, if they had made a habit of it, there’s no way I wouldn’t have complained!
And it is a PITA. Maybe if I’m home I want to have guests over at some point after noon (if they say by 11). And again, if it’s once or twice, ok, I can put up with it. Often? Rude. Just because I live in an apartment does not mean these sorts of intrusions are necessary.
I think they should be able to give you a smaller window. 4 hours seems reasonable.
Please don’t get all passive aggressive. Talk to your manager/super/whatever. Be reasonable. See their side of the story. If it’s important to you that they give you the 48 hours notice (which they ARE legally entitled to do), let them know that and tell them that it’s important to you. Don’t just leave little notes or get angry without saying anything.
I hate how neighbours/tenants/co-workers seem to be afraid of a conversation these days and just get offended and never say anything until they involve a boss/cops/lawsuit. Conversations can go a long way towards resolving disputes. Please have one before raising it to some next level.
I haven’t lived in an apartment in decades, but if management notified me that they needed to be in my apartment in the next hour for something legit, and it wasn’t any sweat off my back, I’d let them in. On the other hand, if I was in the middle of a 60 hour movie watching marathon with my closest friends, and it would be a big inconvenience to let them in even within their 48 hour window, I would kindly ask them if they could wait until our marathon was over.
I just don’t understand getting hung up on the rigidity of the notification period. Being flexible and open with your communication goes along way in your relationsips.
Really?, necessary? I’ve lived in apartments, last time for 2,5 years and not once I had to let anybody in the apartment, not once did i have to deal with a landlord, and my only contact with management was occasional notices about maintenance (not inside the apartment).
This is really pedantic. I wouldn’t even bring it up.
Assuming the maintenance people service a large number of apartments, I would not complain about the entire day window - that is fairly standard practice for scheduling reasons - but I would complain if they are entering “for no good reason”.
I live in a fairly nice apartment complex with many units, and they enter my unit twice each per year - before winter and before summer, to check the heating/cooling systems, replace the air filter, check the fire alarm, etc.
Other than necessary emergency maintenance, I don’t see why they’d be entering your apartment more often than that. What exactly are they entering your apartment to do that you call “no good reason”?
They had to pressure wash my balcony (if I try to explain how many pigeons live/poop there you’ll think I’m exaggerating) so they showed up one day just to look at the balcony and then another day to actually clean it. There was no special reason, they’ve cleaned it several times before and knew exactly what it would look like. I don’t even want them to clean it at all since they won’t do anything about the problem so it’s still unusable about 5 minutes after being cleaned.
They come in like every two months for a general inspection which I guess is to make sure I’m not tearing the place up or setting up a meth lab or something. I’ve lived here for over two years and they’ve been in here a million times and know my apartment is always kept nice.
My main annoyances in an apartment setting are the other people, not the management.
My “favorite” so far is the sheer amount of billable hours we spent with a plumber in our last place. We lived on the ground floor, and the people living above us apparently didn’t understand how drain pipes worked. Or maybe they did. Whenever the drain got clogged with mystery flotsam, their basins would drain perfectly fine, but ours would fill back up with thoroughly disgusting dishwater and shower runoff. After the third time all three of us ended up frantically bailing out both tubs at midnight while waiting for the RotoRooter guy, I suggested to the office manager, as politely as I could, that if the toddler upstairs flushed one more inappropriate object, they should perhaps give some serious thought to flushing the toddler.