Tenant’s Sewage Complaints Are Ignored For A Month, So 20 Neighbors Flood Management’s Phone Lines For Four Hours
I’ve waited a few days for maintenance before, but a month-long sewage backup feels like something that should move to the front of the line.
One tenant in r/LandlordLove kept reporting standing waste in her building’s basement laundry room after the smell began drifting into her first-floor apartment. Management’s solution was to repeatedly send someone with a plunger, even though the actual problem was a collapsed pipe beneath the foundation.
Eventually, she stopped waiting and started knocking on doors. Twenty tenants spent four hours calling management, shared photos with a regional vice president, and threatened to escrow their rent. By 8 a.m. Monday, a commercial plumbing crew was digging up the floor.
Funny how quickly “budget approval” moves when the rent checks might stop showing up.
1. “The management finally fixed the sewage backup after we blocked their phone lines for a whole day”
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After more than a month of temporary fixes and excuses, it was clear another maintenance ticket wasn’t going to change anything. If management could ignore one frustrated tenant, she would have to make the problem much bigger. That’s when she decided to start knocking on her neighbors’ doors.
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Once management realized the tenants were organized and prepared to put their rent payments in escrow, the excuses disappeared. The repair that had supposedly been stuck waiting for approval was suddenly treated like the emergency it had always been. By Monday morning, the tenants finally had the response they’d been demanding.
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The tenants shouldn’t have needed a four-hour phone campaign and the threat of missing rent payments to get a serious health hazard fixed. Still, their decision to organize turned a month of excuses into a professional repair within days. Commenters had plenty to say about how quickly management found the money once its own income was at risk.
12. Commenters applauded them and emphasized how ridiculous it is.
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