Complaint Review: Westdale Asset Management

My landlord (Westdale Asset Management), in Jonesboro Georgia, takes unfair advantage of tenants and abuses them by misusing the law with an arbitrary, inaccurate and unfair water allocation formula. The allocation method sends no price signal to the tenant and the landlord recovers what the company pays the county public utility from the tenant.

The landlord can benefit from a volume discount from the public water utility and not disclose that or any other billing information (gallons of water, number of occupants being allocated to, rate/person and percentage of the total amount of water for which they are billed) to tenants.

Without sub-metering, tenants get billed for common area water usage and have to pay for the cost of the third party billing service as well as for the water they use in their apartments. Tenants in 1 and 2 bedroom apartments are paying $50 - $200 per month. Thats far more than owners of single family homes in the same area.

There are more occupants in many apartments than are on the lease contracts causing the ones who tell the truth to be penalized and pay extra for the ones who don't tell the truth. Many apartments are vacant, which reduces the pool of those splitting the common area water usage.

Clearly, Westdale Asset Management is not concerned about water conservation. The property manager says their billing method is legal. As a legal method, this permits them to charge whatever they like in excess of the actual water consumption and no one will ever know it. This is proof that some apartment owners, if not regulated and given the opportunity, will use unfair business practices and abuse tenants.

Disclosure is vague at best and deceptive at worst. Obfuscation is the order of the day, when it comes to allocation billing. So, unless you have experienced this billing method at another apartment community, you have no idea the other factors that make up these excessive utility bills.

Tara Courts Apartments leasing agents should beupfront with their fees and let the potential renters make a decision based on that.

Im just one person, who chooses to push back, and say this is not okay. I was evicted for the questioning of their billing practices.

MyStory:

Channel 2 Action News Jim Strickland http://www.wsbtv.com/news/24072885/detail.html  

April

Jonesboro, Georgia