4 years ago
Village of Commonwealth. Great physical apartment,...
Village of Commonwealth. Great physical apartment, beyond terrible customer service. This is the typical corporate apartment complex that doesn't care about their current tenured residents, only new. I have lived in Village going on 6 years. It's a great apartment in the sense that it has good amenities, it's in Plaza and the phase 1 apartments are a good size. You cannot get ahold of anyone in the leasing office. They do not post their email addresses on the website or internal portal- you have to email a general inbox. After 4 follow up's I went into the office and asked to speak with the manager. She was OOO for a week. I confirmed that I was emailing the correct email address, which I was but "admittedly, emails tend to get lost".
I explained that I was hoping to sign my lease renewal for yet another year. They have increased my rent every single year and I was asking if there was any consideration in keeping the renewal rate unchanged for this year. The guy in the office responds "this is the question we get the most and the answer is consistently no". Well obviously everyone wants their rent to stay the same, but there was no "let me run that by my manager/corporate/whoever", just "yea we get that question a lot". I asked if there was a leasing manager I could speak with and he responds "Why? Are you looking for a different answer?".
A current resident's lease is expiring and they are moving in with me. To get them added to my lease (now that theirs is ending) and able to keep the amenities access and get their key fob updated to my apartment (a flip of a button), they have to re-apply and pay an additional $100. As he is telling me this, I clearly have an expression on my face and he says "you look confused." Certainly not confused, just dumbfounded at this policy and his overall rude and sarcastic attitude. This also furthers the point that they do not care about current residents.
If you move here, just keep in mind that once you are a resident, good luck with the staff. The Concierge is great, the maintenance staff is great. The issue is with the leasing staff.
Also, make sure you move into phase 1. They built phase 2 so quickly that the quality is abysmal. The floorboards don't stay down, the doorknobs constantly break, there are no screens in the windows (and yes they open all the way), you don't know whether your apartment has a balcony or not until you move in, etc.