The Modern at Art Palace

Dear Sir/Madame,

I am ***, a foreign international student from republic of Georgia. I arrived in DC on January 11th with a friend of mine who goes to the same school. We rented a room through *** and decided to find a permanent accommodation on ground. We looked at different websites, went to Forttoten and were passing by the Modern at Art Place and decided to have a look. All seemed well, we really liked the apartment and decided to apply. It was a very first time we had a real touch to the leasing procedures. Mrs. Sade R, explained things and suggested that our moving in time would not take a long time. if we could love in by January 21st we would only pay for January. She said that a financial and criminal check would not take more than 2 days, in fact it took 5 days because of the government shut down (according to her), We later learned that it had nothing to do with the government shut down, because our current apartment did it in a few hours.
So we paid for the application fee (100$ in total) and amenities (450$) and we knew that amenities fee would be reimbursed if denied. She eventually called and said that we received a conditional offer, hence we had to pay one month deposit. Later she was back and said that we had to pay for the insurance. Every time she was back, she was adding some vales I barely understood. We decided not to take this apartment, because we did not feel comfortable towards the staff. Apparently, the lady said that we would not get our amenity fee back, because 72 hours had already been passed. We never knew that we had that time limit, it was written somewhere on a sheet, but we were sure that she explained everything. Since then, almost 4 days have passed, have not heard anything from the company. I feel they took advantage of us because we are foreigners and do not understand the some rules here. If I knew that I was risking 450$, I would not apply! Why should have I paid for amenities I have never used and I am not going to use?