Complaint Review: Hubbard Bowers - Columbia South Carolina

Hubbard Bowers is undeniably the WORST company I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. If you look up “crook” or “thief” in the dictionary, you should be able to find these people. I rented a (then only 5- years old) house from them for almost 3 years, and can honestly say that that decision was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. To start, the (essentially new) house was in deplorable condition when we moved in July 2010 (huge black marks all over the walls, scuffed stairs, a birds nest in the light fixture out front, no garage door opener, filthy drip pans, broken electrical outlets, disgusting air filters with 4-inch long dust bunnies hanging down, grass out back over 4.5 feet tall, brown stains and hair from the previous tenant in the clogged bathroom tubs, toilets with fecal matter in the bowl…I’m talking the whole gamut of disgusting…and I have pictures of almost all of these as proof), but the move out experience with them was, without question, the most frustrating thing we have ever been through.

Not only did they relinquish a significant portion of our security deposit, but they added $165 of “cleaning and landscaping” charges to our monthly rent. We had to break our lease early due to a job transfer, so paid a $695 early termination fee (I was okay with that), plus had to continue paying rent throughout the term. Despite the law mandating that they must try and mitigate damages, they were not remotely aggressive in advertising our property to prospective tenants and used old, dark, cluttered pictures of the house taken before we moved in, making it look like horrible; so I found myself spending hours upon hours weekly advertising and marketing the house, along with my own presentable pictures, FOR them. They have also clearly never heard of the 24-hour notice-before-entering law, because we received numerous unprofessional text messages informing us of their impending arrival only hours before they’d show up. 

Since when is a text message the way in which a professional company conducts business? Despite picking up their slack in marketing the property, moving out while continuing to pay them over $4000 in rent, plus paying the mystery cleaning and landscaping charges (only so as to not get dinged on our credit), they did not return our security deposit for over 45 days (and even then only returned a unjustified portion of it) and then took over 90 days, countless emails and phone calls, and even 3 in-person visits to supply us with a list of incurred charges deducted from the deposit. (FYI, SC Landlord and Tenant law mandates that security deposits along with an itemized list of deductions be returned within 30 days of termination of the lease!) When we got that list, we noticed that a number of the charges were present (and accounted for via the move-in checklist and pictures) upon move in.

After another month of fighting with them for a mere copy of the move-in checklist, we sent them a side-by-side photograph of the two checklists; showing that some of the exact same things charged/deducted from the deposit were present upon move in, but it gets even better than that- their list of deductions didn’t even add up to the amount we paid! They threw in arbitrary amounts on top of the faulty deductions, obviously thinking we wouldn’t notice. After bringing notice of the (for lack of a better term, complete BS) charges to them yet again, they had the audacity to try and defend them, saying we had damaged everything we had been charged for.

After 4 months of fighting with this horrendous company, threatening them with lawsuits, and personally copying d**k Hubbard and Robert Bowers on the last few emails I sent, this issue was finally resolved, but I still could not be angrier about a company that shamelessly takes advantage of all their tenants. This company is a sham and, unfortunately for them, I absolutely refused to be taken advantage of, regardless of the nominal amount outstanding. I would only recommend a diagnosed sociopath doing business with them- only someone equally unethical and mentally unstable would be able to put up with their appalling business practices.