Connecticut House Apartments

hi - I had applied to *** apartments,***, NW Washington,DC *** under *** Management, offices at *** NW suite *, Washington, DC ***. the Director of Leasing, Laureese J had communications with me on this application by email, promising me (I have it in an email from her) that my "move-in" fee of $400 would be refunded if I decided not to take the apartment (it was contingent on a contract with the *** being processed in time). She gave me a time frame to decide - december 18, 2019.I went to see her in her office on december 17 and wrote out a letter (which she said was all I needed to do) saying I was not taking the apartment and requesting a refund of the $400. she said she would take care of it right away. since then I have been calling her and emailing her and after saying in one email that she would look into it I havent heard back from her. I still havent received the refund after more than a month. I have the relevant emails from her as evidence of our agreement. I unfortunately paid using a direct deposit from my bank because I was rushed and pressured by her to put in the application right away. that was my mistake. I should have just used my credit card. I would have had the option to dispute the charge at least. anyway, this is the situation as it is now. I hope you can help me. thanks!

For the past 14 months, I am have been a resident at the ***. In September, I started a month to month payment because my lease was over, and I didn't want to re-sign. Therefore, I've been paying month to month due to the increasing concerns over how management has been handling issues. On November 8th, I gave my intent to move out on November 30th due to management not giving the legal 24 hours notice before entering the apartment to do repairs that I did not request; the movement of my personal belongings by staff while in my apartment without permission; sawdust being left on my bed after flooding occurred, and not fixing repairs within 72 hours. There is also no control over quiet hours, including loud screaming and banging on my door in the middle of the night. There has also been an infestation of bed bugs and other sanitary issues. There is also other sanitary concerns. Due to these issues that break lease agreements, I need to immediately leave the apartment, but they are requiring that I pay $411 for the days between November 30th and December 8th. Since they broke the lease, I do not think it is fair that I have to pay this.

This issue involves billing/collection issue for a third-party credit bureau reporting vendor called Rent Plus through my apartment leasing company, Daro Management, based in District of Columbia.

The issue began back in March 2019, when I was contacted by a DARO management staff regarding an outstanding balance on my resident account. The invoice stated I owed ~$45 for Rent Plus Resident Registration, which I had not heard of before. When I inquired about the balance, the DARO management staff promptly informed me that it was a credit bureau reporting service that DARO had partnered with to get the residents to take advantage of building your credit by paying monthly rent on time. Great service and all, but I simply did not sign up for it. When telling this to the DARO management staff, he informed me I had been signed up through an email campaign. (To this date, I do not recall clicking anything in the email to indicate that I wanted to sign up for the service, nor did I give any type of authorization/verification to enroll with ***.) Regardless, I was only focusing on the fact that I wanted to have the charges removed from my account, and also if I was accidently/mistakenly enrolled, I wanted to opt out. When expressing this to the DARO management staff, he said he would go ahead and remove me from *** on March 22, 2019, and the registration fee I was initially charged with was reversed.

Couple months later, I started seeing $4.99 *** charges coming back to my monthly rent statements, and had reached out to management to remove it once again on May 1, 2019 then again on June 3, 2019.

It's been over 2 and a half months now since I had requested the balance be taken off my account, there has not been a single response or follow up from the management company.

It's not about the dollar amount (as it is obviously minimal), but the fact that I keep getting pestered with the charges either by letters to my apartment with the invoice or an email from the property company reminding me of a balance that I do not owe.
DARO management company has been very disappointing in the customer service aspect in this situation. They were very unresponsive and did not pay slight attention to a simple ask by a resident.