electrical problem concerning bad/old sockets

By anonymous

Upon moving into this apartment my roommates and I did not notice (and were not informed by the rental agent) that the only rooms with updated electric sockets were the kitchen and the bathroom. Every other room has single socket with no grounds and the plug-ins are loose fit. We have had three times the normal light bulbs blowing out and we have had a two-three prong converter actually melt from a surge. Of course it doesn’t help that in order to remain plugged in place some sockets actually have duct tape keeping the plug from just dropping out onto the floor.

Approaching the landlord’s workman/manager upon rent collection we were notified that this electrical problem was known and was not do to be fixed for a year or more. We also broached this subject with the landlord who then also gave us the same answer, he cited work on another rental property that was currently in the works (which is now finished).

He complains about us falling behind on rent but doesn’t see fit to deal with the problems we have to deal with because of his ignorance of them. I deal with higher utility bills on top of replacing light-bulbs and living with the fear of bad surges even with surge protectors since there are no rated plug-ins for them.

We also had problems with our heating unit shutting off during the winter, someone came in, checked, told us that if this continued to inform the landlord and the cleaning and maintenance would be done. We are now four months since that problem, we had reported it twice and the only reply was it will be taken care of during ‘scheduled maintenance’.

Edited on: Monday, December 24th, 2012 12:17 pm

One Response to “electrical problem concerning bad/old sockets”

My response: (We welcome stories, examples, explanations, answers and a touch of your personality)
 

John

December 26th, 2012 2:02 pm

I could understand the feeling you have specially when landlords would tell you that it should be done during scheduled maintenance. Since this is an ongoing problem, you could get to have a forum or meeting with your landlord and if it fails, you can complain them through RPA and even give a negative rating. This is an advantage for you so that people will no longer be victimized by poor service from this kind of landlord. This is the link to the complaint center: http://www.rentalprotectionagency.com/complaint_center.php


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