The ever delicious Ashley spoke to me today and advises that the following note has been left on our door -

After recently reviewing you account, it appears as if you have a credit on your account. We appreciate and want to thank you for paying and pre paying your rent on time. However we do ask that you pay your rent every month off of the statement that you receive in the mail. If you loose your statement or if you do not receive one please let us know, and we will be happy to give you your current balance! your current credit is ____$1.45___! Again please pay only the amount that is due, and if you are unsure of your total please give us a call. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

I replied with the following. It makes me so mad that a company would send such a dumb note. Frankly, I don't need to be told that my account is in credit, just take it off next month! But not only that, but they whine about over paying??? OMG!

Hello ,

I just wanted to drop you a quick note regarding the information your office left at my apartment regarding the $1.45 credit I have.

I would like to explain how the credit came to be on the account, and would love to hear your suggestions for how to avoid future occurrences of this issue.

As I have explained to all your staff, several times, I travel; a lot. Anything from 50% to 100% of my time can be spent away from home, so the statement you mail me is of little use to me, and I invariably don’t receive it in time.

If I’m out of the country, I often will not have the ability to call the office to request the amount, and when I do try (as indeed I did this time), I get an ‘answering service’ who are unable to provide me any assistance.

For the penultimate billing period, I tried emailing one of your team to request the total amount owed, followed up with another mail requesting the information, and did not receive a reply.

I pay my rent, most often via your website. A website, incidentally, which cannot tell me the total amount owed. I even considered paying by recurring payment thus avoiding this repeated issue each month, but alas, the recurring amount is static, and my account is not (that one baffles me even today).

So, the only option I could think of, was to pay an amount knowingly above that owed, thus ensuring that the amount was covered.

You duly have advised me that this is not conducive with your account system and advise me to ensure I pay only the correct in future; a somewhat strange note to leave a resident, but I’m sure much nicer than the one you would have left me should me account have been short by $1.45, or not paid at all.

So, what I was wondering is, what are your proposed actions to help remedy this situation, and what steps are you taking to make this process ‘friendlier’ for your valued residents?

If you cannot see anything you can do, and have no plans to make changes to your systems to facilitate this issue, then I would kindly request that you do not leave me such a note at my home again.

Thank you for your time.

James Lane
Unit 2131