Vee Lagrome
Silver Member
I'm sorry, I don't know where exactly to post this, but "anxiety" seemed to be the best fit. I am trying to keep my cool, but I have almost reached my boiling point.
So, September 7 of last year, my neighbor was stabbed to death and my condominium building was set on fire. Unfortunately, my unit was directly below the one that was set on fire (by the murderer). As a result, the entire side of our building (and my unit) was destroyed. My homeowner's association was almost sympathetic with me and my husband at first, but they said something that just really irritated and confused us, "So sorry for your loss. Don't forget to pay your condo fees! Just because you were burnt out of your place doesn't mean you don't have to pay!"
Of course, we're sitting there thinking "we've lost everything we had. Oh my god" and they tell us to keep paying our condo fees? Are you serious? I've tried so hard to be civil (no cursing), but it's getting very difficult with these people. So, we asked them the day after the fire how long the restoration was going to take, what with the criminal investigation that was going on. Everyone, including the home owner's association says 3 months. 3 months, 3 months, yeah, 3 months. Ok, I said, fine, that sounds fine. Now everyone has amnesia and no one remembers telling me "3 months" even though I made sure to ask multiple people multiple times and even added in "are you absolutely 100% sure of 3 months?" Everyone gave the same response "oh absolutely, that will be no problem". It wasn't an unreasonable time frame, so I felt confident about it.
First, it's been SEVEN months and our condo STILL isn't done and isn't even CLOSE to being done. The restoration crew that the association hired doesn't work but maybe twice a week and the team SUCKS, to be honest. As a matter of fact, for the 2 months after they tore everything out of the condo, the team did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And when they do work, they make so many mistakes that I just want to boot them all out.
The crew makes so many mistakes it's like they take 2 steps forward and 5 steps backward. For example: they installed the smoke detectors while the ceilings were still down, but messed them up; my electrician fixed the smoke detectors for them because it was obvious they had no idea what they were doing; the crew put the ceilings up and covered the smoke detectors because they are a bunch of idiots; the crew started punching holes in the ceilings only to discover that they completely forgot where the smoke detectors were and then had to take the new ceilings down; they reinstalled the ceilings, but messed up in the living room, meaning they had to start over; they re-reinstalled the ceilings but then covered up the dining room light box... AGAIN.
That's just one example. They've done the same thing over and over again everywhere else. My husband and I have been checking in on the crew and calling the project manager on a very regular basis to remind them of the things they are supposed to do or fix. It's becoming extremely exhausting and extremely frustrating for us because it is so obvious that they are in way over their heads and we really don't want our condo to be messed up.
On top of this garbage, we've been in touch with our homeowner's association, trying to get their help in keeping the restoration crew on track, or possibly getting them to hire a DIFFERENT crew that actually knows what they're doing. What is their reaction? "I don't know what you want us to do about it. It's between you and them as far as I'm concerned"
AAAUUUUGH!!!! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! They literally said that to us. I was absolutely floored. These people are so absolutely out of their minds that I can't believe why we pay them so much in condo fees every month for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. It's not like they even repair our building. The stairs, railings, and awnings look absolutely horrendous and we can't get them to take care of that. They're so preoccupied with stashing money away in their reserves (they bragged that they have over $1 Million in reserves) that they openly ignore all homeowners who demand that they spend that money to fix the damned buildings. They told us about the reserves at a homeowner's meeting, and immediately all of the angry homeowners demanded that money be spent on aging infrastructure, broken windows, cracked sidewalks, and the like. It is an absolute joke how badly our buildings look. We live in a very well-to-do city surrounded by very nice looking homes. It's not exactly cheap to live there, and yet, our buildings look like friggin crack houses! My neighbors have been making demands for building repairs for YEARS and NOTHING has happened.
They got angry with US for wanting a say in how OUR money is spent on OUR homes. It is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. I know my neighbors are furious and want to throw all of the people on the board out the window and get a new board, but for the time being, I'm just not sure what to do with all of this. My husband and I are absolutely suing this awful board for the hell they've put us through, and we are swimming in evidence to support our claims, but it's just so stressful! I am so upset that we can't get one scrap of sympathy about our loss from our homeowner's board. I have never encountered such a heartless and incompetent group of people in my life!
I guess I just needed to rant about it a little...
Has anyone else run into this kind of laziness/incompetence?
So, September 7 of last year, my neighbor was stabbed to death and my condominium building was set on fire. Unfortunately, my unit was directly below the one that was set on fire (by the murderer). As a result, the entire side of our building (and my unit) was destroyed. My homeowner's association was almost sympathetic with me and my husband at first, but they said something that just really irritated and confused us, "So sorry for your loss. Don't forget to pay your condo fees! Just because you were burnt out of your place doesn't mean you don't have to pay!"
Of course, we're sitting there thinking "we've lost everything we had. Oh my god" and they tell us to keep paying our condo fees? Are you serious? I've tried so hard to be civil (no cursing), but it's getting very difficult with these people. So, we asked them the day after the fire how long the restoration was going to take, what with the criminal investigation that was going on. Everyone, including the home owner's association says 3 months. 3 months, 3 months, yeah, 3 months. Ok, I said, fine, that sounds fine. Now everyone has amnesia and no one remembers telling me "3 months" even though I made sure to ask multiple people multiple times and even added in "are you absolutely 100% sure of 3 months?" Everyone gave the same response "oh absolutely, that will be no problem". It wasn't an unreasonable time frame, so I felt confident about it.
First, it's been SEVEN months and our condo STILL isn't done and isn't even CLOSE to being done. The restoration crew that the association hired doesn't work but maybe twice a week and the team SUCKS, to be honest. As a matter of fact, for the 2 months after they tore everything out of the condo, the team did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And when they do work, they make so many mistakes that I just want to boot them all out.
The crew makes so many mistakes it's like they take 2 steps forward and 5 steps backward. For example: they installed the smoke detectors while the ceilings were still down, but messed them up; my electrician fixed the smoke detectors for them because it was obvious they had no idea what they were doing; the crew put the ceilings up and covered the smoke detectors because they are a bunch of idiots; the crew started punching holes in the ceilings only to discover that they completely forgot where the smoke detectors were and then had to take the new ceilings down; they reinstalled the ceilings, but messed up in the living room, meaning they had to start over; they re-reinstalled the ceilings but then covered up the dining room light box... AGAIN.
That's just one example. They've done the same thing over and over again everywhere else. My husband and I have been checking in on the crew and calling the project manager on a very regular basis to remind them of the things they are supposed to do or fix. It's becoming extremely exhausting and extremely frustrating for us because it is so obvious that they are in way over their heads and we really don't want our condo to be messed up.
On top of this garbage, we've been in touch with our homeowner's association, trying to get their help in keeping the restoration crew on track, or possibly getting them to hire a DIFFERENT crew that actually knows what they're doing. What is their reaction? "I don't know what you want us to do about it. It's between you and them as far as I'm concerned"
AAAUUUUGH!!!! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! They literally said that to us. I was absolutely floored. These people are so absolutely out of their minds that I can't believe why we pay them so much in condo fees every month for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. It's not like they even repair our building. The stairs, railings, and awnings look absolutely horrendous and we can't get them to take care of that. They're so preoccupied with stashing money away in their reserves (they bragged that they have over $1 Million in reserves) that they openly ignore all homeowners who demand that they spend that money to fix the damned buildings. They told us about the reserves at a homeowner's meeting, and immediately all of the angry homeowners demanded that money be spent on aging infrastructure, broken windows, cracked sidewalks, and the like. It is an absolute joke how badly our buildings look. We live in a very well-to-do city surrounded by very nice looking homes. It's not exactly cheap to live there, and yet, our buildings look like friggin crack houses! My neighbors have been making demands for building repairs for YEARS and NOTHING has happened.
They got angry with US for wanting a say in how OUR money is spent on OUR homes. It is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. I know my neighbors are furious and want to throw all of the people on the board out the window and get a new board, but for the time being, I'm just not sure what to do with all of this. My husband and I are absolutely suing this awful board for the hell they've put us through, and we are swimming in evidence to support our claims, but it's just so stressful! I am so upset that we can't get one scrap of sympathy about our loss from our homeowner's board. I have never encountered such a heartless and incompetent group of people in my life!
I guess I just needed to rant about it a little...
Has anyone else run into this kind of laziness/incompetence?
