I got stationed here in 2011 and moved into Houston Lake Apartments November of 2011. The Staff seemed nice and it seemed like an ok place. It was way to far from base from me so I decided to move when my lease was up. I lived alone in my apartment and I felt really uncomfortable coming home from late shifts because the stair lights would be out sometimes and took awhile to get fixed. The summer before I moved my air went out and the temp in the apartment went up to 90 degrees. I called to have maintenance come out and when I got home from work the next day I realized they were still not there. When I called the front they really didn't give me an explanation as to why they hadn't shown up but they got me in contact with the guy. He told me he was home already in Macon and exhausted and gave me instructions on how to temporarily cool the apartment until he came out the next day. I was pretty shocked that i was given a response like that and I wasn't happy that I had to go into where they hair conditioner was since I had many spider issues living there and I was scared to death I would encounter another in there. Now my biggest issue with the apartments and the one thing that is making me tell every new person that get stationed here to never ever ever ever! rent here is what they are doing to me now. When it was about 3 months out from my lease expiring, I received a letter telling me that id have to give a 60 day notice so they could schedule the move out inspection and such. A week after I got the notice, I took a letter down to the office and let the lady know I wouldn't be renewing and that I found a place closer to base. She took it and said thank you and they'd contact me about a pre inspection to move out or something. A few weeks later I got a letter telling me about renewing my lease and such, which confused me since I already dropped off my notice. I called the front and they just said it was a mistake and might not have been marked off about my notice. A lil over a month out I got another letter saying the same thing, I was still confused so I typed up another letter just in case and brought it to the front office to ask what was going on. I was told they didn't have anything about me moving about so I tried to talk to the lady who took my original letter...she didn't work there anymore. They told me to just turn in a letter so I turned in the one I had and said it was my 30 days notice and the lady said itd be fine. I also scheduled a pre-inspection that day. When my pre-inspection date came I waited for about 30 mins that morning, which sucked because I had just had my wisdom teeth removed and my husband left to take care of his dog back at his housing so I had to wait alone while not feeling great. I called after 30 mins of waiting and the woman told me that she didn't have anything marked about the pre-inspection and would be there in a lil bit anyways. That really didn't surprise me that they messed up again! Everything was good during the inspection and I let them know when I would need to do the final inspection. Of course the same thing happened on the final inspection day except she was an hour late!!!! She said everything was good and I signed my paperwork and handed over my keys. Almost 3 months later I received a letter stating that I owed $280 something for not giving proper notice of moving out! REALLY! I couldn't believe this! First they took 3 months to tell me that I owed money and second I owe money for something that I didn't even do since THEY lost my first notice! I contacted the woman to tell my exactly what was going on...in every response she was very rude. I asked her to give me the owners or manager contact information and she refused and said I can deal with her. I then asked for documents supporting her claim and why it took them so long to charge me for this because I wanted to take it to my base legal to get help. She sent me something that was completely useless and only proved that I owed nothing. I kept trying to explain to her what happened and told her the name of the lady who took my first notice and all she could say was that she no longer worked there. After I sent one more email asking for documentation and a real managers contact information so I can bring this all to legal, i got no more replies from her. I assumed that they realized they were wrong since I heard nothing else. Last friday (11 MONTHS AFTER MOVING OUT!!!) I received another letter stating that I had until October 2 to pay the almost $300 or THEY would seek legal action. I couldn't believe this, I skyped my husband who is deployed and just cried for 30 mins...I couldn't believe the were trying to take money that wasn't theirs and that they would do something like this. Unfortunately, the base legal office can't provide legal services for this until next month which means I have to pay the money today. They did however assure me that since this case seems very clear cut I can take them to court to get my money back after they help me build a case for what happened here. These are really horrible people and it's very suspicious that this is going on and that no one would give me the contact information of the real managers. All I can do now until my meeting with legal is inform everyone of my experience and hope that no one, especially military members move there. I'm just happy that I have contact with all the new incoming workers to the base and I get to tell them about this horrible place and how they tried to rob me of my money. So far I've been able to tell 2 new people that got stationed here about my situation when they told me they were going to look at these apartments. At least I was able to make sure that they didn't take money from 2 more families. I also plan on sharing my experience on the base facebook pages and anywhere else. These people are very low an sneaky and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing this.
