I currently rent a condo that I’ve been in since January of 2008. I want to complain about the poor service I’ve received lately from the people (including the office manager) in the leasing office, so I looked up the property management company online. Their only contact info is an email address and two phone numbers - one of which is the condo’s leasing office number. It lists their address as just the town (Largo, FL) where the complex happens to be located, so I’m not sure that calling them will get me someone who will care about my complaint. If I send out an email that just leads to the front office, nothing will change.
What can I do to get my complaint heard by someone who will work to resolve the atrocious customer service skills in that office? Barring that, what other suggestions are there aside from moving out…which I may well do even though this place is close to perfect for me.
Do you have a local tenant landlord mediation service?
Is the management company registered with the Better Business Bureau?
BBBs are like the local Chamber of Commerce. They support business and not consumers. Best you spend time researching where the email addresses and phone numbers actually belong to since it sounds like you will end up contacting the very people you are complaining about.
There’s always a local media’s consumer reporter. Look into online apartment/condo review sites. See if local/state government has an ombudsman program. Just be careful dealing with government officials. Florida consumer “protection” is all pro-business. If you file a “complaint” requiring the state to looking into it and they miraculously find no complaint, expect the group you complained about to come after you with the support from the state agency that found “nothing.”
Have you tried calling the second phone number?
Also, is the office manager the head of the office there? Or does someone senior to him/her work there as well? If so, it might be possible to complain directly to them. Another possibility, check your lease, it might have contact info for the property management company’s main office (as opposed to just the leasing office).
Marc
Unless the property management entity and the landlord are the same (often they are not) I’d pull up some tax records and see who the actual owner of the property is. That’s who the property management company works for. If their property management company is costing them tenants or causing problems I’d imagine they’d be pretty concerned.
I was going to sugest this.
And thirded. I am about to move to a house and plan to rent out my condo through a property management company. I would want to know if the tenant was having problems. After all, if you would otherwise stay, but are now going to move out because of the bad management, it will cost the property owner money while the place is unoccupied/re-marketed. It is in his/her interest to know and try to remedy the problem.
Their unreachability might sort of go hand in hand with their bad customer service.
I’m not so sure I agree with that. The two times I’ve (as a business owner) had to deal with the BBB, it was to resolve complaints from customers on the order of “I ordered a burger and you only gave me a burger. I was expecting filet mignon and lobster.” It would have been cheaper to refund money to the customers than to waste time sending the BBB copies of contracts, billing and correspondence, but I was determined to make sure the resolution correctly stated that the customer was an idiot.
If it’s a condo building, you want to address the condo board. That’s who chooses the property management company, and probably the on-site manager as well.