1. We have bugs. Roaches. They claim they "spray" but I havent seen anyone and the bugs are still here.
2. Our toilet constantly overflows. Now, we have two girls living in the apartment and we know how to use a toilet. The maintenance man admitted that the plumbing was so cheap that "a bit of toilet paper would clog it up"
3. The landlady yelled at my roomie to try to get her to buy out the entire apartment because she was blaming us solely for the toilet overflowing. (4 bedrooms, they couldnt find someone to take the other two so we have no obligation to buy out the other two bedrooms-especially because we havent been doing anything wrong.)I dont know if its customary for a landlady to come and yell at a student for that, but yeah... (edit to add that I was in the office one day waiting and they had the current maintenance requests-there were TONS saying that the toilets were not working properly or the toilet was stopped up or they had to stop the toilet from overflowing or the toilet did overflow...so its not like we are the one freak apartment who's toilet is overflowing nonstop)
4. The carpet had to be pulled up after one of the overflowings...they said it would be replaced within a week or two. Yeah, you guessed it. MONTHS later, our carpet is still pulled up.
5. They basically forced us to start using their internet. We used to pay a separate company. They raised our rent for the "internet fee" and as we are poor college students, we cannot afford to pay for 2 internet services so we switched. The new service is more expensive and so much slower. Seriously, I was paying less for an incredibly fast wireless connection. Now I am paying more for an unstable slow as SHIT connection. I feel like I am on dialup!
6. Our lease has no exact terms for breaking the lease. We asked two different people (employees) the terms of breaking lease. They both said "the security deposit and notice at least a month ahead" One of them even said they like to work with the people because they know most of us are students and do not have much money.
Great, sounds great, we can afford that. SO we go talk about doing it and the landlady suddenly says that is NOT the terms and the terms are basically we have to replace ourselves or lose our deposit and pay rent for however long it takes to find new people. This apartment is a freaking hellhole-no one wants to live here. We would be paying rent until the lease broke anyways and we cannot afford that. Plus, I have a feeling they would put any potential tenants in the other empty apartments and just take our rent (maybe thats cynical). And I bet they have given the other deal to people they like, but since we refused to buy out the entire apartment for the overflowing toilet, I bet we are on the bad list of try not to be nice to them. I really, really wish we had thought ahead and got it in writing when they told us the first deal...but since we asked more than once, I guess we figured it was official.
So, in short, do NOT live at VWA, there are better places for nearly the same rent! I wish I had known before signing my soul to the devil for a year!