okay, so for the past week or so my roommates and I have been receiving letters from our apartment. In them we are told that we're getting a new roommate and that the common areas need to be clean, and that they will be coming by 24 hours prior to the move in to look the place over.

This is what the letter said

The common areas, kitchen, living room, hallways of your apartment will need to be cleaned by all residents currently living in the apartment. The common areas will be inspected by the Brook Place maintenance team at least 24 hours prior to your new roommate moving in. Any common areas that have to be cleaned by maintenance will have cleaning charges assessed and passed along to the current residents living in the apartment

okay so we need to have the place picked up? right? That makes sense. So all last week my roommates and I spent hours cleaning up the place, vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, mopping, etc...and by Sunday we were all gone (I left Saturday for a camp out on the beach and the other two girls went back home)

Yesterday I get a call about 4:30 from the complex and them saying that they came to look at the common areas and that it wasn't clean. Really? it wasn't clean? So I stop what I'm doing (having memorial day dinner with my family) and drive 2 hours to clean my apartment (again) even though the only thing i could find 'dirty' was a plastic wrapper on the floor. I spend another hour and a half re-cleaning everything.

when the maintenance team comes they start on how there's stuff on the counters and coffee table (boxes of crackers and paper towels...signs that people inhabit the place) and I have to throw everything into my room so they won't charge for it.

Today I go to pay my rent and I'm told that a $175 cleaning fee is being attached to rent. Split three ways but still. They were claiming that they had to vacuum and sweep and everything else that we had already done. The only thing I could understand charging for was painting over some scuff marks upstairs.

I told the manager that we had cleaned, and that their letters for having the place cleaned were very vague. We were thinking that cleaned meant have things picked up, swept, and vacuumed, but that it still would look like people lived there. She wanted it to where it looked like one of the show rooms. Having the place look like a show room is ridiculous, especially if you do not make that clear that that's what you want. She kept trying to pull the "they're paying almost $500 to live here" but you know what so am I. I'm paying almost $500 to live in a town home that has the cable and electricity going out all the time, it took 2 months for someone to come fix my drains, the dishwasher didn't work when we moved in. Once it was fixed it broke again, and leaked all under our carpet and damaged our baseboards.

and then on top of everything she gets pissy at me for having the deadbolt locked...I'M THE ONLY ONE HOME!!!!