error

I received a scary, threatening note from my landlord the other day saying that my rent was late that that I had 14 days to "vacate" or something. I knew immediately that it was a mistake as the check had already cleared, but for a second it gave me a flashback to times when bills didn't get paid quite so promptly. But even then, I'd never received a letter like this. I mean, who even "proposes" eviction if the rent is only a week late? How about I propose evicting them the next time they ignore one of my noise complaints? I sent them a letter with a copy of the canceled check. Then I followed up with a phone call.

Calling this office is always a crap shoot. It rarely results in action. Last year, it took 4 phone calls to get the battery in my smoke detector changed. In the meantime I had to endure its extremely loud random screeching (no one has come up with a better way of telling you to change the battery yet???). So I called the office and asked for the person who wrote the letter. Immediately I could hear a bit of nervousness in the receptionist's voice: "What company are you calling from?" "I'm a resident of MV24, " I replied. "I'm following up on the letter he slid under my door yesterday." Then she asked me which apartment and something else that I don't remember than then suddenly put me on hold mid-sentence.

Another voice popped on the line, "Hello?" "Uh, I was talking to someone and she just put me on hold all of the sudden." I later learned I was speaking to the assistant property manager. Or maybe she was the assistant *to* the property manager? I told her what was up with the rent and then she seemed to be doing her best to not acknowledge that she had received the letter (note to self: send it certified next time).

As she spoke I was hearing music so I said something about it since it was hard to hear her over it. "Oh, that's just the computer," she answered and continued talking with the music. Dude! I'm just thinking back to a time where I would have been really embarrassed and turned the music down never to have it on again while talking on the phone, but that's just me. Maybe the next conference call I have I'll crank up some tunes to entertain my clients. Finally she acknowledged the mistake and I requested written confirmation that I did not owe for the month and she offered to email it which basically was proof that she did indeed have the letter. Dude! Why play dumb? If she'd actually been smart and proactive, she would have called me the moment she received the letter and verified that an error had been made.

I actually did look at another apartment last weekend. It was too small and the timing was a bit too early, but it was very tempting. Though I do have to question the meaning of the phrase "top of the line". This wasn't quite what I would call top of the line. The first thing that kind of bugged me before I even saw the apartment was the size of the gap between the bottom of the doors and the floor as we walked down the hallway. Details people!  There are probably lots of reasons that the gaps were there, but there are no excuses to leave it that way.

I feel like there's a tremendous amount of laziness in the Boston real estate market. I'm always astounded, when I look through Craigslist, by photographs of rental apartments that are a mess. I guess no one could be bothered to clean the place before taking photos. It makes me wonder if they are really joke postings. If the landlord is at all have trouble renting out the place, that may be a good reason why.