Complaint Review: Meridian Place Apartments

I rented an apartment around August of 2002 for 1 year. In April of 2003, I lost my job and left the state when I accepted a new job. I spoke to the apartment manager and told her of my circumstances. She said that as long as I wrote a letter explaining the situation, I would be fine and would not suffer any penalties. I did that and paid May's rent. That would leave the lease with 2 months of rent due minus my security deposit.

A short time later, I received a letter from an attorney asking for over $2,000 in back rent. I was only paying $595 a month for rent. I spoke to the attorneys office and told them that I was not willing to pay this as that was not what was verbally agreed upon.

After thinking that this might have gone away, I forgot about it. Recently while checking my credit report, I saw that I had a collection for OVER $2,000! When I called the agency to see what this was about, they told me it was from Meridian Place Apartments.

On top of the fact that the aparment manager told me it would be okay to break the lease, they had someone in the apartment that June! They are trying to collect rent from me for months when they had rented out the apartment to someone else.

BEWARE! Do not trust them. They will ruin your credit if you have to leave your lease early. This is a college town(although I was not in college). How can they expect that everyone can stay in a lease for 12 months and possibly ruin someones credit who has not even had time to establish it. This is a scare tactic that will not work on me!

Tim
Hoover, Alabama
U.S.A.