I'm sorry for such a long review, but it's just that bad:…read more
I lived at Ambassador Arms for 1 year and 5 months. I chose Ambassador for the price and the location. I rented a upper two bedroom apartment for $535 on a year contract. Even that is a little pricey for what kind of place that you get. I later regretted signing this agreement, not only because the place was horrible, but because my friend got a beautiful townhouse with a garage for $550.
About two months after I moved in everything started breaking from GENTLE use; broken sliding door, leaking faucet, towel rack broke, the window blind mechanism is literally designed to fail, and I had not been able to shut a closet door since I had moved in. The electrical is a nightmare. When you move in, be prepared with several boxes of light bulbs because you will go through all of them and then some. Most of the time they wouldn't last 3 weeks. I checked the socket, I was using the right watt bulbs.
The walls are paper-thin, not exaggerating. Music at a modest volume can be heard by your neighbor, and you can hear the tenants at the other side of the building walk up the stairs. We had three noise complaints in the first 4 months. On was defintely my fault, but the other two were ridiculous. I soon learned to come home, sit down or tip toe around the house.
The maintenance room down stairs makes a BUNCH of noise. It was a running joke with all of our friends lumberjacks lived in there.
The manager is quite rude. I'm not the only one that thought so; this has been repeated by former tenants, current tenants that lived in my building and tenants that I knew at work. One morning, the manager called me up nice and early out of a dead sleep to rant at me that I cannot have a grill on my balcony. Quite understandable, as it's against fire code; if only I had a grill on my balcony. I was getting yelled at for the neighbor's grill. I didn't get an apology, only a sort dismissal. Very unprofessional all around.(By the way, don't try to put ANYTHING on your balcony or patio, even deck chairs or camping chairs. They go around every 3 months and leave a note on your door telling you to take them off, no matter how pretty they look.)
The maintenance people are horrible! Every 6 months they have a scheduled maintenance week where they change out your air filter and check your smoke detector. Lock your door folks! If they come knocking, and you happened to be sleeping, they walk right in! I woke up to a man opening my bedroom door saying "Just checkin' your smoke detector!"
Sure, I think it's pretty awesome that you get free heat and water, but that doesn't make up for the $300+ consumers bill. Two months out of the summer, there must have been 5 toasters and 7 blow dryers running 24-7 in our apartment that I didn't know about. Apparently the meter was reading properly, but some lines were crossed... All I had to say was WHAT?! No compensation, I was told that it was "power consumed".
I only waited so long to move out after the lease was up because I was waiting for an approval for a loan, and didn't want to sign another years lease somewhere else. After my lease was up, I went month-to-month and was $50 more. I could live with that. Three months later, however, the rent went up to $605, and I was not happy. Thankfully the loan went through and I was ready to move out 2 months later.
Have to add some Pros, to be fair:
Free Heat and Water
The grounds are pretty
Tennis Court
Free access work out area and pool during office hours with 2 guests
Lots of closet space
No assigned parking places, plenty of spots for everyone
That's all folks