ABSOLUTELY DO NOT. NOT. NOT. NOT. NOT. RENT FROM ANY BUILDING OR APARTMENT ANYWHERE THAT IS OWNED BY BEACH LANE MANAGEMENT.
The staff is extremely rude, unresponsive, and either foreign or not very intelligent, and the moment you point out their lack of professionalism, they tell YOU that you are the one with a problem. Note: there should be negative stars for the rating, but that unfortunately is not an option.
The full back story is: in summer 2011, my two roommates and I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and found building 274 West 19th Street and found a great apartment in an area we loved. 1) We were told we were signing a July 1 lease. When the lease came, it stated June 1 (this may have been the broker's fault, but I am still listing it here), 2) We were told the apartment would be fully cleaned/renovated, with the floors waxed, cracks fixed, walls painted etc. by June 5. This was different than what they had initially told us, which was everything would be ready by June 1, which is what we had told our respective subletters as we scrambled to find subletters for the first month, after we got a heck of a surprise from the lease. 3) The floors were dirty, bathroom tile cracked, doors didn't lock when my roommate and I moved in July 2011. We were starting to get upset at this point. We then nicely reached out to the ""account manager"", Terrance, at Beach Lane asking him to make the fixtures the Company said they would. Not only did it take MONTHS for the bathroom tile to be replaced, lights replaced, doors and cabinets fixed, they eventually told us they couldn't do the floors unless we moved out all of our furniture for 3 days. So our floors never got done, even to this day. 4) I was having technical problems with my direct deposit at BofA and called Beach Lane's ""rent department"", which apparently consists of 1 person named Desmond. He openly told me ""there are so many checks every month...I lose a few every now and then"". I thought that was completely unacceptable. 5) My roommate kept smelling cigarette smoke coming from the vent in her room. When she got an ear infection and the doctor told her a main cause could have been second-hand smoke, we contacted Terrance and Beach Lane about this. Not only did they completely not care about her well being/health and were unresponsive for weeks, they said nothing could be done about it and that was that. 6) Our third roommate is moving out, so we kindly asked if only her portion of the deposit could be mailed back to her, but this very rude and incompetent woman named Dana Schwartz said that no, all of the money has to be returned to her because when we sent in our deposits she got the ""luck of the draw"" and they put her name on their bank account. I became very upset and told her that we were never informed of this, and that I did not appreciate this lack of professionalism, especially after everything we had been put through. When I told her this she said ""I am not communicating with you anymore"" and forwarded our correspondence to someone named Mitch Rothken, who was equally if not more rude, saying ""Every single piece of correspondence from you is self-serving, truculent, sarcastic, insulting, demeaning but, frankly, otherwise impertinent."" I have the emails to attest this is false, and anyone reading this who doesn't believe me and is interested in reading the emails I will send to you.
I cannot believe this company is functioning the way it is. Though people may still unknowingly sign leases and rent with Beach Lane, I know that word of mouth will help anyone who has to deal with these complete baffoons to never rent from Beach Lane ever again. Their company WILL go down for this. Maybe not today, but in the near future yes, and I hope Dana and Mitch pay for their nasty actions. Karma is a bitch.
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