Emily

Jun 2, 2021

Communication and management is horrible, but the house is great

I was one of the first residents to rent from GJ in the Indianapolis, IN market. We found a beautiful home that fit our needs perfectly for a price that was standard for the market at the time. The neighborhood is wonderful, the location is wonderful, and the home owners have been easy to work with directly. My living experience in the house has not been bad. My home is clean/updated, and all maintenance requests have been responded to and taken care of quickly. The ad for the home was truthful. The processing of applying, paying deposits, and getting settled into the house was fine. There are a few utility issues I'll detail below. Where the 2 star rating comes in is with GJ itself. It is beyond difficult to get a hold of these people. They're, somehow, able to call you regularly if you have an unpaid balance, but they can't seem to answer the phone or their email for questions or requests. I have been playing phone tag and email tag with GJ for the 3 years I've lived in this beautiful home. The only time I can ever get someone to answer the phone is when she's calling me about my unpaid balance. Now let's get to this next part... As I said before, I was one of the first residents to rent in the Indianapolis market. GJ was extremely new to Indy. The house I ended up renting had been sitting empty for a month, so I probably got lucky in that regard, as it likely encouraged them to rent to me quickly. When I entered into the rental agreement with GJ, the rep at the Indy office would text me regularly for/with updates. In these text updates, the rep specifically stated that in the Indy market, utilities were to be left in GJ's name, and I was not to switch utilities to my name. I further confirmed this in written emails with the rep from Florida (the parent office) who sent me my lease, as the lease states to switch utilities to the tenant. So, I had two individuals confirming with me that in the Indy market, I was to NOT put utilities in my name. I followed this instruction, yet had a red flag raised internally. 1 month after living in the home, my electricity is turned off in the middle of the summer. I give it a day, just in case it was an outage. When the electricity (and therefore the AC) did not come on 24 hours later, I called the power company and learned that GJ had never placed this home in their name, and the home electricity account was still under the realtor's business license. Naturally, the realtor requested a complete disconnect. I informed my local Indy GJ rep of this issue via text, and she assured me they would take care of it. The solution was for me to put the electricity in my name. Okay, not a problem, I did this and got my electricity back on, but this was completely counter to the instructions I received the month prior. The water was still under GJ business account, and I was being charged irregularly by GJ for water usage. Every 3 to 6 months, I would get enormous water bills that GJ expected to be paid witin 2 weeks of receiving. I told them multiple times that charging me for half a year's worth of water all at once was totally not feasible for me. My concern was first noted in October 2019, when I received a water bill for the past 6 months. When I did not receive my next water bill until February 2020, I called GJ again and for the second time asked for this irregular charging to be resolved and requested to be charged every 30 days as is standard for utilities. The rep I spoke to in Florida in Feb 2020 assured me he would look into this situation and figure out why I was being charged so erratically for my water usage. I never heard back from GJ after this, despite numerous emails. I never received a water bill for the remainder of 2020, and my ledger proves this. GJ never responded to any attempts at contacting through out 2020. Fast forward to March 2021, when my water gets turned off by the water company. I received a big, ugly placard on my door that clearly showed "NON PAYMENT" as the reason for disconnection. I was so unbelievably angry. I called the Water Company and discovered that the account my water was under was in fact Great Jones, and they had not paid my water bill since March 2020. Which means, this account went unpaid for 12 full months. And if you recall, GJ instructed me to NOT put utilities in my name in 2019. I was furious. It took me 2 whole days to finally get someone from GJ to contact me after 25 emails and 16 phone calls. I forced them to pay the balance on the account and immediately placed the water utility in my name after this. Here's the current battle. After GJ paid the balance on THEIR account, I have been fighting with them for 2 months about this balance. They use a third party service to pay utilities, who failed to pay my bill for 12 months. GJ has been less than helpful in resolving THEIR mistake. I had to threaten them with a news segment to be taken seriously.