Complaint Review: E.A. Williams Property Management

So my wife and I decide to move our family to Midlothian Virginia.  We find a house advertised in a nice neighborhood, good schools nearby, white picket fence suburbia type subdivision.

The property is managed by a company by the name of E.A. Williams, Katrina Benbow is the proprietor.  We put down first months/last months/pet deposits etc, sign a lease, and move in.

Then the nightmare starts.

Our air conditioning unit starts blowing 90 degree air in the middle of summer, we make a call to E.A. Williams / Katrina Benbow.  A week later, she sends a handyman out to the house.  No equipment, no tools, no HVAC gear, just some scruffy dude who inspects the A.C. unit then says "yep it's broke" and leaves.  This persists for at least three more visits. Different companies, same "yep it's broke" prognosis, still 90+ degrees plus in the house.  Presumably the owner of the house is footing the service call bill for each tech they send out that doesn't actually fix the problem.  The A.C. unit is never fixed, two summers of 90+ degree heat during half of July and the entire month of August.

Then the microwave range goes on the fritz.  Another phone call to E.A. Williams, no response.  A week later, we get an email that the "microwave range is a non-essential appliance therefore it won't be fixed."  We dust off our table top microwave oven from storage, no big deal.

Autumn rolls around, it starts to get cold, we turn on the gas fireplace.  A few days later the gas inlet on the fireplace is shooting a two foot flame into the living room, apparently something in the gas regulator burned out.  Another call to E.A. Williams, no response for a week.

I contact the manufacturer for the fireplace and get all of the warranty information, the grate and logs for the unit are still under warranty and the manufacturer agrees to send out a replacement.  The manufacturer also says they've never had a unit go bad like that, which I think is weird.  Three separate handyman visits later, they determine that the gas regulator needs to be swapped out.  I give Katrina Benbow all of the manufacturer contact particulars and warranty details, and then let her know that I am going to have the faulty gas regulator inspected to determine what was wrong with the unit based on my conversation with the manufacturer.

So the day that the fireplace regulator is being replaced (by a different fireplace vendor, Benbow doesn't even contact the original manufacturer to have the equipment under warranty replaced for free), she shows up to our door step with an off-duty sheriff deputy in full uniform.

Seriously, in the middle of the day, in front of all of our neighbors, this lunatic woman brings an off-duty sheriff deputy in full uniform in his police cruiser to our front door step, to remove the faulty fire regulator that I was going to have inspected to determine the cause and origin of the fire.

Over and over and over this type of garbage persists.  Something goes wrong in the house, she sends no less than three separate companies to diagnose the issue without actually fixing anything.

I start digging into her company, at the time we signed our lease she's not even operating a legitimate corporation or LLC.  No company, no incorporation, no business license, no Virginia DBA, Benbow just made up the name E.A. Williams, registered a website, then starting signing leases and collecting checks.

If you are looking to lease proprety in the Virginia area, run in the opposite direction from E.A. Williams and Katrina Benbow.

If you are looking to have your property managed by E.A. Williams / Katrina Benbow, then you would do well to look for alternatives unless you don't mind paying for multiple service calls for each issue reported by any of your tenants.