Fleischhauer Rentals in West Lafayette

Mausam Kaur,

Looking for a place to stay in a city where you know no one, is a pretty daunting task. There are a lot of pros and cons of one apartment building compared to the other. This is the summary of my experience with a rental company called Fleischhauer rentals.
Reading the reviews of various rental places on various websites was not of much help ,as nobody had a good opinion about any of the rental places around West Lafayette and coming from a big city I expected things to be a lot better than what was on offer.
Students in 2nd year in my program had carried out a survey about rental places in West Lafayette and distributed the results of the survey to all the incoming students. In that survey somebody had written "Fleischhauer is good" . I foolishly took that 3 word review to heart and reached straight for the Fleischhauer rental's office.
My first impression wasn't too bad. They were pretty professional in showing me the various apartments and within one hour I decided a place and gave them a deposit. The agony began the day I moved in. There was a really foul smell in the apartment and there was a bed which was the dirtiest thing that I had ever seen in my life and I thought maybe the smell was because of the bed. I pushed the bed outside of the house and into the garbage bin, which, for some reason, was placed 10 feet away from the entrance and was right outside one of the windows of my first floor apartment.
I complained at Fleischhauer's office about the smell and they said they will look into it, around the same time my school started and I got busy with classes. I largely ignored the smell and within 15 days after spraying about two bottles of room freshener the smell had gone. I was so occupied by smell and school work that I completely ignored the state of the refrigerator that I was given. The refrigerator was not keeping the food as cold as it should, I tried lowering the temperature but that seemed not to make any difference. I thought maybe I am so dumb that maybe I do not know how to operate a refrigerator and asked a friend of mine to examine it just to make sure that I was not missing something really stupid. As it turns out I and my friend concluded that the refrigerator is missing the defrost mechanism. Well I was surprised that how come to this day in US there are refrigerators installed in houses which do not have a defrost! I grew up in a third world country and we always had a refrigerator which either had a auto defrost or a switch which could be pressed for defrost.
I went to the Fleischhauer rentals office and asked about it and they said they will look into it. At this stage I was already 1 month into the program. A few repeated requests fell on deaf years and their attitude was a far cry from their attitude when I initially met them. Employees at Fleischhauer rental suggested I plug out the power cable of the refrigerator every time I want to defrost it and wait for the ice to melt. I have tried to see the manager and they have written my complaint about 4 times and have repeatedly promised that someone will contact me to talk about it, to this day I am still awaiting someone other than the receptionist to offer me some kind of explanation. I have thrown milk cans, juice bottles and various other food items which I had bought from Walmart after barely using them because they spoil so often in the refrigerator.
One fine day the microwave oven also stopped working. As if the course work at school wasn't enough this new problem destroyed whatever semblance of sense I had. I went to the office and lost it. With immense frustration and desperation I had no idea how I should behave with them. I asked them to fix my refrigerator, microwave and remove the garbage from in front of the house. They told me that the garbage cannot be removed as the location was decided by the municipal govt. and they promised to send someone to fix the refrigerator and microwave.
The mechanic came the next day and replaced the microwave, but said he cannot replace the refrigerator as there is nothing wrong with it! He said if I wanted to get rid of the ice then I need to plug it out and let it melt.
Employees of Fleischhauer rentals enter your house during anytime of the day to show your apartment to potential tenants without any prior notice. Last month they sent out notice that all the tenants will be charged a fine if dog's shit continues to lie outside in the common area. Consider the abnormality, I will have to pay because some stranger gets his dog to shit on public property which happens to be about 20 feet away from my house. I have tried getting in touch with certain William Fleischhauer who is the owner of the place but all I can find is the email address which is checked by the receptionist and the phone number which is again attended by the receptionist.
The irony is such that because of lack of options and time, I may end up renewing my lease with these money sucking, cold hearted illogical people. I hope I find some other decent place.
An advise to all new students @ Purdue. Avoid Fleischhauer rentals at all costs.
Regards,
Ajj Kaim