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All Beach Apartment Management |
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The Condo Commandos |
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I have an appliance maintenance contract that covers repairs on my apartment. Why are you urging me to get rid of it?Because as a Landlord you are in business and your tenants are your customers. In our experience, these appliance contracts are a major source of tenant dissatisfaction and complaints. For starters, we are forced into requesting that the tenant call the service company him/herself to make the appointment for repair. This is because they will only give a four-hour or longer interval when they will show up. although we would be more than willing to open the apartment and let a repairman in, we obviously cannot afford to bill you to have a man standing by at your property for over four hours while we wait for the service man to show up. So the tenant takes the day off from work (which already irritates him/her) and, as often as not, they don't show up at all! This is really fun if it involves a dead air conditioner in mid-summer or a refrigerator that is out of service for days at a time. If and when they do show up, it is almost inevitable that they "don't have the part" required. Rather than go get it, they take forever to order it and re-schedule. This gets the tenant even more steamed up, losing a second day (or more) from work. The "justification" for using these outfits is that they "guarantee" the appliances. This guarantee, however, is very often illusory. We find that our owners are usually cheated on this if it comes up. What ends up happening is that if the appliance cannot be repaired cheaply, they declare that it is obsolete or beyond its normal service life. This has been done to our clients who have dishwashers, refrigerators and air conditioners with major parts failure such as drive motors and compressors. We refer appliance repairs to independent service companies that have a track record of showing up on time and not cheating our customers. We receive no compensation whatsoever for channeling this business. For example, we use ASAP Appliance for refrigerators , washers and dishwashers. They show up exactly when scheduled, fix the appliance or report that it is beyond economic repair and get the job done quickly. Since we know exactly when they are coming, we can let our maintenance man open the property for them if need be, avoiding further tenant complaints about wasted time etc. For air conditioners we send the calls to Miami Breeze Conditioning (for window or wall units) and Douglas Mechanical (for central a/c's). Same story: they show up, get things fixed, or recommend replacement where appropriate. |
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