Renee B.

As others have stated below, since aimco has bought the apartment complex, it has gone nothing but downhill. I have never been so disrespected as a tenant and will never rent from them again. They only care about signing leases but do not care about the current residents. After 1 year and 11 and a half months of tenancy (a lease aimco created so I would have to pay the repainting and carpet cleaning that is legally waved after 2 or more years of tenancy) I was more than ready to leave Saybrook Pointe. The move-out process was excruciating. They only accept rent through their website portal which is often erroneous. I had a question about my last 11 days of rent so I wanted to wait to pay what I thought was an incorrect amount until I talked to someone. I called constantly and went to the office several times, but no one was there. I spent hours trying to get ahold of someone and then finally did on the 5th, after I was charged $100 for a late fee. I paid so as not to be evicted my last month, but continued to dispute it with Sandy McClure, the director of Operations for Northern California. She was also unresponsive. After 3 phone calls and 3 e-mails, it took her a week to get back to me, the day after my lease was up. She told me that I should have paid my rent even if I thought I was being charged the wrong amount and would not refund the late charge for the neglect from management. I scheduled 2 pre move-out inspections and no one showed up for either one. Later, I was told that we will be charged the $130 "general cleaning" fees essentially no matter what we do because most people can't match their standard of cleaning. But I was never provided with a breakdown of their standard. We also had to repaint but we were still charged with a $150 "touch up" fee that was also said that we would be charged this because we can't complete it to their standard. I have had credit card fraud three times in 2 months (and possible identity theft) because my mail was being stolen and the apartment complex did not do anything about it for 4 months. Even after the new mail boxes were installed, theft continued. Also after they installed the mail boxes just before christmas time, I stopped receiving package slips in my mail box. When I tried to bring the mail issue to the management team's attention, they were unreachable. They had reduced their office hours, were not around for most of the day on Saturday and closed on Sundays. They rarely answer the phone. My key stopped working in the street gates outside my apartment and it took more than a week to fix this issue. The pool gates were broken for a long time and the hot tub and heaters were out of order on a regular basis. In my lease renewal offer, I was offered a $250 increase in rent per month (15% increase) plus the parking spot that was previously free, I would have to pay an additional $60 per month. When I talked to the community manager requesting a negotiation, his counter offer was $20 off of the initial offer... Essentially a slap in the face. Shortly after this, they had an offer that started in mid-december that was free rent until the end of the year. This is much more off than my $20 off per month offer. It seems Saybrook Pointe makes money off of turnover, they don't care to retain residents.