A Letter to Mayfair Apartments

Small-Apartment-Building.jpgHelp me write my for­mal let­ter of com­plaint to my apart­ment build­ing. I’ve got the gist below, but it needs some tweak­ing.

July 15, 2004

May­fair,

A lit­tle over one month ago, my bath­tub was leak­ing through my wall, it was fixed, briefly, and is now leak­ing through the wall again. Cur­rent­ly the smell of some­thing rot­ten fills my room. I keep an order­ly and clean apart­ment, top to bot­tom, and the only expla­na­tion I can come up with is that some­thing has died with­in the walls.

I am con­tin­u­al­ly amazed at the how this build­ing is in per­pet­u­al dis­re­pair. The laun­dry room is always full of bro­ken wash­ers and dry­ers. My sup­pos­ed­ly brand new refrig­er­a­tor broke after one month. My sup­pos­ed­ly refur­bished apart­ment has stained car­pet­ing, han­dles that fall off clos­ets, doors that fall off cab­i­nets, a bath­tub that has leaked through a wall and mildewed the car­pet and to top it off, smells like a dead ani­mal.

Despite my com­plaints, only the min­i­mum, and a shod­dy min­i­mum at that, has been done to fix these issues. The refrig­er­a­tor that replaced my bro­ken one had streaks and smears of uniden­ti­fied food on the inside, is per­pet­u­al­ly run­ning and does not sit lev­el. Since my kitchen floor is not lev­el either, I have attempt­ed to arrange the refrig­er­a­tor in such a way that it sits lev­el. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this would require plac­ing the front of the refrig­er­a­tor against the front of the stove. When I used a vaca­tion day from work to be present in my apart­ment as a new win­dow was installed [a pres­ence that was specif­i­cal­ly ‘required’ on the scrawled note shoved under my door] the work­ers nev­er arrived and I was informed that they ‘had run out of win­dows.’

Since I had wast­ed a vaca­tion day I informed Helen Parisi that the work­ers would have to come on a Sat­ur­day to install the win­dow. Over a month lat­er I found anoth­er near­ly illeg­i­ble note under my door inform­ing me that the win­dow would be installed in my apart­ment the next day. Less than 24 hours notice is almost as bad as no notice at all.

Final­ly, to top off the man­age­ment woes, you lost my June rent check, wait­ed until July to inform me that you ‘did not receive my June rent,’ and had the gall to attempt to charge me a $50 late fee. You received my June rent. I know this because I per­son­al­ly deliv­ered it to your office not twen­ty feet from my apart­ment with a note about my leak­ing tub and soak­ing wet floor. Five days lat­er I found a note in my room say­ing that my bath­tub had been fixed.

I had to put a stop pay­ment on the check you lost, which came with a $29 ser­vice charge. I am not going to pay this ser­vice charge. My August rent check will be $29 less than nor­mal. I am also ask­ing to be released from my lease with no penal­ty at the end of August. I don’t believe I can use the word ‘liv­ing con­di­tions’ in regard to my apart­ment because I have come to the con­clu­sion that it is unliv­able and that you do not care whether it is or not. I know I can find a bet­ter deal and more respon­si­ble man­age­ment vir­tu­al­ly any­where else than a place oper­at­ed by KSB man­age­ment.

Adam Har­vey
Apart­ment 110

5 thoughts on “A Letter to Mayfair Apartments”

  1. I think it sounds good. You should con­tact the Cleve­land Ten­ants Asso­ci­a­tion (google for that and you should find their web­site). Their site has all sorts of sam­ple legal doc­u­ments (which I sup­pose you could get at work too) and they exist to help in mat­ters like these.

  2. Sec­ond para­graph, you need a com­ma before “to top it off,”.

    In the third para­graph, I would break into a new para­graph when you switch to talk­ing about the whole “win­dow inci­dent” and maybe have a tran­si­tion­al phrase at the begin­ning like “Also” or “On anoth­er occa­sion.”

    And final­ly, I real­ly real­ly real­ly would try to short­en it a lot–make it more con­cise. I’m not say­ing to dumb it down nec­es­sar­i­ly, but real­ize that who­ev­er is gonna be read­ing this is NOT GONNA WANT TO BE READING IT because it’s say­ing some­thing they don’t wan­na hear. So they’re going to be nat­u­ral­ly dis­posed to gloss­ing through it to get to the end unless you keep their inter­est. And if you talk so lengthi­ly about every­thing, you’re gonna lose their inter­est quick­ly.

    All the points you bring up are good ones. Maybe just try some bul­let­ing of your exam­ples and mak­ing them more con­cise and that kin­da thing. That way it’ll also have more force.

    That help?

  3. Thanks Genevieve, that site is help­ful.

    Thanks Lau­ren, those are good point. It is most­ly a rant at this stage.

    your house was fine jmay.

    and yes. except crap­pi­er.

  4. So, the liv­ing con­di­tions last sum­mer weren’t quite so bad? I’m sor­ry to hear that you have to put up with so much crap. Do the apart­ments feel a bit like some of the bleak­er nov­els from the cold war era depic­tions of the future? i.e. 1984, A Clock­work Orange, etc.

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