Recently in Complaining Category

Our lease is ending on our apartment and we had every intention on renewing until we received this notice in our door about a raise in rent. Please enjoy it thoroughly and then enjoy my response.

It's that time of year again to renew your lease with us. We would like to give you the opportunity to renew your lease. We have enjoyed having you as one of our residents and would love for you to stay with us for another lease term! Keep in mind that we would need a 60 day notice if you intend to leave. Here is your new rate if you are interested in renewing:

Current rent: $940 New rent: $965-$985 depending on length of lease

Why move when you can renew?

Did you know the high cost of moving in today's world? We have assembled some important information on moving costs, apartment fees and other monies you might accrue during your move. Here is a break down of what we found.

Cost to rent a moving truck..........$175 average for 4 hours!
Cost of gas for the moving truck.....$65
Cost to transfer utilities...........$150
Cost to buy supplies (boxes, tape, bubble wrap)......$200
Deposit for another apartment...........$230-$430
Administration fees.............$225-$300
Application fees..........$50-$65
Pet fees..................$200

Not to mention the hassle of changing your address, schools, additional toll monies for transportation, additional gas money, changing forms for work and school, deposits for utilities and most importantly taking time off of work or school to make the move!

So why move when you can save hundreds of dollars, maybe even thousands by staying right here in your home!

We look forward to preparing your new lease ASAP!

Management,

You have recently informed us that you would like us to renew our lease at a raised rate. Though we were planning on renewing our lease, we do not feel that an increase in our rent is justified. The $940 that we are currently paying, that our rent was raised to the last time we renewed, is the highest one bedroom rent we've seen in the area.

In the past few months we have referred two different people to your complex who toured the grounds but decided the apartments were overpriced.

Yet there are three units in our corridor that have been and still are vacant. The one directly below us has been empty for two months now, around an $1800 loss for the complex. The apartment across from us has been empty for ten days, for about the cost that you would like to raise our rent through the duration of a twelve month lease.

As loyal tenants to the tune of $27,000 in rent paid, we took your "renewal offer" letter as a slap in the face. It began with how much our rent will be raised and then spent the entire rest of the page detailing how much more expensive it would be for us to move out. To imply that you are saving us money by charging us more is not only incorrect but downright rude. You do not have us trapped here, paying whatever you wish us to pay, just because of the expenses incurred in a move.

However, your breakdown of moving costs intrigued us, so we went looking for a new apartment and crunched the actual expenses of a move. What we found was a two bedroom apartment with 140 more square feet within three miles of here for $910 a month, first month free.

Security deposit: $200
Pet deposit: $150
Utility deposits: $0 (good credit)
U-Haul Rental: $39.99
Gas: $10 - $30
Moving Boxes and Tape $10 (boxes are free in many places, you know)

With the free month's rent we will save more than $500 the day we move in and an additional $660 in twelve months, compared to the rate that you've proposed.

We are not trying to rub these numbers in your face, but merely satirizing the letter that you gave us. We are quite happy living here, but do know our options and looking at the numbers above, over $1000 saved doesn't sound so bad for three or four days work.

If you keep our rent at the current rate of $940, we'll consider a 7 month renewal. If you give us the first month of our new lease free we'll sign a 12 month renewal at your new rate of $965 tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Christian and Elise Stella

Last week, I went to this open casting call for the reality show Big Brother.

Anyone that knows me personally, probably knows that I've been waiting in the wings for this opportunity for years. At first, I wasn't twenty-one and then this year I was getting married... but the next Big Brother... Big Brother 9 next summer was going to be the one.

I don't know what my fascination with Big Brother is exactly, but I'm sure it's some kind of reinventing myself fantasy like losing all of my weight was four years ago. I can go on TV, in a house of strangers and be myself or be something totally different, whichever feels more correct. Then I can prove something by outsmarting these strangers. It's my idea of fun, honestly.

But for some unknown reason, I completely blew my audition video. I shit out of my mouth and definitely ended all chances for Big Brother 9.

I had this whole story I was going to write before I wrote that I blew chunks, but it's not that important anymore. It did however involve a whole lot of women at a "Women's Show" buying shoes and handbags and floofy bendy pens for no reason as I sat blowing the video. Then I ended the video with, "Well, I kinda blew this video, so I'll stop now."

Dear lord.

So keep an eye out for me on Big Brother 9 next year. I'll be the guy sitting on a couch and watching the show in the reflection of the TV screen.

This is further proof that having a camera shoved in your face just doesn't get any easier. This just begs the question once again... why the hell do I want to go on this show so bad?

Maybe it's to get used to cameras?

So we had this storm come through a few days ago and I stepped outside to see how bad it looked. It’s not so bad, I thought. Loud thunder, but a little off in the distance, it seemed. What I didn’t notice at first was that it was off in all distances. Thunder to the left, thunder to the right, then BAM. Through the arch of our covered walkway, all I saw was lightning. It sounded like my ears were ripped off. The fastest, loudest sound I’ve ever heard. Then car alarms.

Our car. Holy shit. Lightning struck our car. It had to have. Our car was parked right there!

I ran inside and Elise was jumping out of bed. At this point we’re sure lightning hit the car but we don’t want to go near the windows to look out. We went back outside under the covered walkway to see some crazy guy running up the stairs. He was saying, “Lightning struck your building! Lightning struck your building!” Okay, the car narrowly escaped and the building wasn’t on fire, so all was going to be okay.

Then I remembered the computers.

Now I want you to ask yourself a question. Is your computer plugged into a surge protector? Okay, so I’m sure it is. Or I’m sure you at least know it should be. But is the actual coaxial cable that is plugged into your cable modem running through a surge protector?

If it is not and your building takes a direct lightning strike, this is what happens.

A surge of electricity travels through your cable line, right into your cable modem, blowing it.

Then it continues on, through your Ethernet cable, into your wireless router, blowing it.

Then, finally, even though it is a wireless router, its wireless for the secondary computers on the network, your main computer that is actually hard-wired into the router with another Ethernet cable for the best performance, that computer’s Ethernet card blows.

That computer’s Ethernet card is not a stand-alone card, but like most computers, is built onto the motherboard, so the whole motherboard is blown.

Of course, in the other room, Elise’s computer is blowing as well. When you pull the power strip out of the wall, you notice that the grounding prong is just plain broken off.

Two computers, a router and a modem… dead.

Thankfully, we’d just purchased a laptop to replace my main computer and already transferred and backed up most of the important files. Today, we replaced Elise’s desktop. Then we bought a whole shit-lot of surge protecting devices.

Hello, this is in regards to what I now know was a bank error on my account. My account was in a terribly misleading state yesterday. I signed in to find that a check was deposited into my account in the sum of $2,500 and that a $2,500 "cash withdrawal" was pending. When I viewed the deposit slip for the transaction, there was my full name and partial address in someone else's handwriting on an "out of state" deposit slip. Someone was cashing checks using my name and account number. You can see how this would be distressing. Most of my bills are due this week and someone is forging my name, but the BOA phones are closed, so I run to an ATM and pull out the maximum amount. When I get home, I send the rest of my money to myself via Paypal for a fee of $31, but I can’t risk my bill money getting stolen or held due to fraudulent activity. Today, my local branch tells me that it was just a bank error. I go home and the “cash withdrawal” now says “bank adjustment” and here I am, out $31 in Paypal fees because a bank made the error of hand writing my name and address and account number on a deposit slip?

-Christian Stella

So two weeks after our run-in with Wal-Mart over the handling of our Pan's Labyrinth situation, they called and left two messages on my phone. The woman sounded extremely eager to help us. She said to come in and she would get us another copy immediately.

Now here's the great part. The receipt was safely tucked into a money clip on the back of this crazy credit card holder wallet thing in Elise's purse. Coming home from Publix the day before Wal-Mart finally decides to contact us back, we're drinking a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew that we screw closed and E stuffs in her purse so that we can carry grocery bags up the three floors to our apartment. It's in the purse for all of two minutes, yet the condensation from the bottle manages to drench our receipt beyond recognition.

It's over now. Nevermind. Fuck it. We're stupid twice over at this point. Our only proof is practically bleached away. The only damn thing you can read on the receipt is the movie title. Not the store number or the date or the time or the register or the cashier or anything else. It's just embarassing, so nevermind. It went from being our fault for leaving the movie at the checkout, to their fault for dropping the ball to our fault for Diet Mountain Dewing the receipt into oblivion, sooooo...

I go online to order the cheaper, one disc version of the movie, used from half.com. I wasn't going to pay another $30 for the movie, but we got one that the seller stated was "only watched once" for $11 with shipping. A great deal.

We get it in the mail today. The disc is in perfect condition. Looks brand new. The case is a little scuffed up, but who cares. Then, I see the little box on the back that says, "full screen". What the fuck? It didn't say that on half.com. The seller didn't mention that. It really is a movie to watch in widescreen. It's so damn beautiful. In fact, wait a minute... I thought the movie was only available in widescreen. Then the rating pops out at me. Rated G. "All audiences." I thought a man bashed another man's face in, seriously caved it in, on screen, with the butt of a gun.

It's a fake. The damn movie is a bootleg. It's the best bootleg I've ever seen, but the DVD actually starts with a logo for "Taiwan Video Entertainment" or some shit. The subtitles have typos. The picture quality is extremely watchable, but a little more digital looking than you would expect it to be.

It's bullshit because this guy has like 1600 positive feedbacks and I started reading them... he had a few positive feedbacks that said that their movie was an obvious copy, but still a good purchase! Most just said that their movie arrived as ordered.

It made me think that some of these people that are getting duped really have no idea that they're not getting the real thing. And they may not know until they try to trade the movie in somewhere or even resell it themselves and get busted for it.

I sent him a message, so we'll see what he has to say for himself.

So now that we have a couch with legs after Target (I can only assume) abandoned their refunded but incomplete couch in our apartment for us to deal with--the couch eventually came to find legs through ingenuity (you have no idea) and Home Depot--now, I have a Wal-Mart story.

I'm interested in people's thoughts on this because it is something we blamed on ourselves that quickly flipped after talking to our local store's customer service.

What happened is, Monday night after work we were in Wal-Mart looking around the electronics department. They were stocking the shelves with Tuesday's new release DVDs and Elise grabbed a copy of Pan's Labyrinth. It didn't have a shelf tag yet, but the guy tells Elise that he thinks it's $22. I'm all for buying it, but want to wait until the next day to watch it.

We grab some sugar-free ice cream, check out and head home.

The next night, we go to watch the movie and we don't even have it. Now, this is the stupid part. This is where we are to blame. I put the ice cream in the freezer when we got home from Wal-Mart, but thought Elise had grabbed the movie out of the bag when I set it on the counter. She thought I had taken the movie out when I was putting away the ice cream. Neither of us had actually touched or even seen the movie outside of the checkout line.

Now, it isn't even the same day anymore. If this were, say, a $4 grocery item, oh well. If this were a $15 DVD, I'd probably just go back to Wal-Mart and buy a new copy, but when I found the receipt, I saw that the movie rang up $27.87. Holy shit! I don't remember the last time I spent that much on a movie. I mean, it's not 1998 anymore in DVD land. Now I feel really stupid. This was a $30 DVD that had just become $60 if I want to go and repurchase it.

But we decide to give customer service a shot first. I mean, a store as big as Wal-Mart must keep some kind of log of the groceries and items that people leave at the checkout counter at what time. People leave entire bags of things all the time, right? If they have a log, it'll be in there and they'll know we're telling the truth and we'll save ourselves $30. If they have a log and it isn't in there, at least we tried.

So, the guy at customer service just says, "Let me get my manager. They'll have to pull up the security footage." Okay, so so much for a log.

The manager comes over and grabs our receipt, he looks it over for a second, then he looks me right in the face and says, "You only purchased three items and didn't even check for the most expensive one?"

Now, I wanted to walk the fuck out after that. I didn't walk up into their store demanding things or acting in any other way than that we'd made a mistake. What I'm saying is, we knew it was stupid, we didn't need this guy all but calling us stupid, first thing.

He made us stand around and wait while he got in contact with security and I really wanted to tell this guy off and leave, but of course, he's talking about checking security tapes to make sure we're not ripping him off and leaving would just make us look guilty. Eventually he says that there isn't anyone in security, so we should call back in the morning. (Note to REAL theives, Super Wal-Marts don't have security guys at 8pm?)

The next morning, Elise makes the follow-up call to Wal-Mart, as they had asked. They ask for our phone number and say that they'll check the tape and get back to us later in the day.

Nowhere in any of this did they take down the information on the receipt. The time, or date or register of the purchase. Yet they say they're checking the tape for us.

After that call, I wrote to corporate over the handling of the situation. From what I could tell, it was handled in a way to either intimidate us into leaving (if we were lying) or get frustrated and give up (if we weren't). Honestly though, I think the truth is just that these people were just pushing us to the next person's shift, rather than actually doing what they insisted on doing in the first place.

I wish I'd just blown that second $30 to begin with, because now I'm just going to have to make a project of this.