Category — bumblefucked rants

Disclaimer: All text in this post is my opinion.

Less than a week ago the Bumblefucked household moved back across the country to the Parkland View apartments in Breinigsville, PA. This west Allentown apartment complex bills itself as a luxury apartment complex. I found this complex on the web. They had ads on Craigslist as a new complex and the prices were reasonable so we signed a lease without ever seeing the place thinking that it was brand new, so how bad could it really be, right?

I had a few conversations over the phone and via email with people at the apartment complex and never once did anyone mention that the majority of the complex was still under construction. Imagine my surprise to arrive and find my building surrounded by other buildings in various stages of construction. Heavy machinery, building materials and construction workers are my daily view thus far.

Today I awoke to see that a paving crew is paving the road and parking lot at my building and that I am blocked in.

The only way out is to drive through the construction debris and chance getting nails in the tires. Oh, and there actually isn’t a road out through the debris, you have to scale a pile of dirt to get out. No one has called or stopped by to let me know they were paving today. And no one rang the buzzer this morning so that I could move the car. Shortly I will be driving through the construction and praying that no nails get in the tires.

The frustration is not limited to just this though.

Each time that the gas stove/oven has been turned on since we have been here the carbon monoxide/smoke detector goes off. Did I mention that there are a total of three of them and they are hard wired together? So when one goes off all three of them go off and it’s not like the old school smoke detectors where you can just take the battery out. At first, I just attributed this to the fact that turning on gas stoves creates carbon monoxide and that some idiot had put one of these detectors less than 10 feet from the gas stove/oven. I found a fix online of putting shower cap over it. So I went to Rite-Aid and did just that.

Unfortunately, it still goes off. After looking up the model number (SC9120B) online I found a user manual that told me that this should never be this close to a stove/oven and if it constantly goes off like this then it is in a bad location and needs moved. I can’t wait to tell the apartment office about this and see how they react.

I also get to tell them about the faulty plumbing in the bathroom that is leading to soggy drywall each time we shower.

Oh, and if you look at the apartment website it boasts on the first page:

The 5,000 sq. ft. private clubhouse features a fitness center, swimming pool, hot tub, business center, putting green and recreational areas.

Yeah, that is still under construction as well. But they did install a gazebo outside yesterday!

In my opinion, Parkland View Apartments in Breinigsville, PA is a major FAIL thus far. Shortly I am attempting to drive over the dirt pile to get out of the path of paving and will be visiting the leasing office to have some words with them regarding all of these things.

Disclaimer: All text in this post is my opinion.

Today I purchased some tickets on Ticketmaster. I’m used to getting screwed by their fees. For instance, I bought two $30 tickets and it cost me $82.40.

What surprised me was that they are now apparently charging for Will Call pickup!!! See, Will Call wasn’t listed as a pickup option. Instead it was listed as “Retail Outlet Pickup” wtf? Here’s what it said:

Pick up your tickets at a participating retail location near you. You must present your order number, a picture I.D. and the credit card used to place the order. The cardholder must be present in order to pick up the tickets. If you intend to pick up your tickets on the date of the event, you may go directly to the venue box office and they will be printed for you.

See that last line? Will call pickup. The fee? $1.00. Wankers.

When I moved to the Los Angeles area I ended up at Archstone Warner Center. Why? Because I have a long history of renting from Archstone in multiple states. I’ve never had a problem with the Archstone brand and thought it would be a safe bet. This is my Archstone Warner Center review. It my all my opinion.

After renting apartments regularly since 1998, and never renewing a lease in the same place,  I can honestly say that, in my opinion, Archstone Warner Center is my worst apartment experience. They even beat the place in Maitland, Florida where my refrigerator door fell off on move-in day, the air conditioner did not work on move-in day (and it was July) and there was such a gap on the patio door that flying ant-like bugs invaded the apartment nightly until I caulked the door shut.

Archstone Warner Center seemed like an awesome find when we moved in. Sign a 12-month lease and get 2 month free rent! The complex looked nice enough and I had always had pleasant experiences with Archstone.  Within the first month of moving in, the fire alarms sounded three times. Archstone has a 30-day move-out policy that we thought about taking advantage of that first month. The apartment office said that the fire alarms were sensitive. Apparently if people try to come into the garage with a vehicle that is too high they go off. If someone is smoking in the hall or balcony they go off. Sometimes I think they just go off because they haven’t in a while!

If had to guess, it would be my opinion that I seem to recall the fire alarms going off about an average of twice a month the entire duration of my lease. I have even experienced the fire alarms sounding in the middle of the night. Once around 3am and once around 5am. Not once has there been a real fire when the fire alarms have gone off her during my lease term.

If you Google “archstone warner center reviews” you will see many reviews complaining about the fire alarms. Sites like ApartmentReviews.net list several complaints from residents at Archstone Warner Center.

You’ll also see some complaints about the move out charges that they spring on you when you put in your 30-day notice. One reviewer on Yelp.com says he was charged $1000 when he moved out for painting and cleaning. This is where my other major problem with this complex comes into play. In the lease, like in all apartment leases, it states that you are liable for normal wear and tear. In all my years of apartment renting I have never had to pay for anything to be cleaned or the like. Well, today I got a little move out packet from Archstone Warner center where they are estimating that my move out fee will be around $400!! In my opinion, this is beyond ridiculous. They forsee needing to paint, clean and either clean or replace the carpet. That’s great except the carpet was crappy when I got here. I forsee needing to tell them to suck it. One of the sheets they gave me details how they charge for labor and materials upon move out. Never have I heard of an apartment complex charging someone to paint the place.

In my opinion, here are other problems with Archstone Warner Center that I wish I had read in a review that would have kept me away – even though the garage is gated there are always transients dumpster diving in the complex, vehicles get vandalized and are stolen out of the garage – motorcycle theft seemed to be an issue, after the forest fires they took forever to clean up the walkways but then refused to clean people’s patios, they let people have huge loud dogs and they don’t make them keep them inside at night, huge gaps between the doors and the door frames that result in loss of cold air or heat depending on the season, the parking garages are incredibly dangerous as people fly around the corners and they don’t have mirrors up so that you can see people coming, there is not enough parking available on each level and they let motorcycles park in the large spaces leaving empty compact spaces and no spaces for larger cars.

In my opinion, the pool area and fitness room are nice. So is the business center. But in my opinion, Archstone Warner Center closer to a dump than the luxury complex it claims to be. If you are considering moving to Archstone Warner Center, it is my opinion that you should look someplace else and at least read the reviews on the other sites.

I will do a follow-up post once I move out and let people know if I get bumblefucked by Archstone Warner Center and their move out fees.

**this Archstone Warner Center review is my opinion**

I don’t think it is any secret that the state of California is hurting for cash. Their latest attempt at raising money leaves a sour taste in my mouth. What is it?

The CHEATERS program.

The California Highway Patrol wants people to call them when they see an out of state license plate. Apparently someone forgot to inform the geniuses at the CHP that Cali is a big tourist draw and there are likely to be a lot of out of state plates here.

I clicked through to the CHP CHEATERS page to see what they were looking for. Here is what they want the tattletales to give them besides license plate number and make/model:

Comments / Evidence (Please include in the comments field any relevant information that might help with the investigation: specific addresses where the vehicle is observed, how long has the vehicle been seen in California, any information about the owner, why you feel that the owner is attempting to avoid California registration, local decals/bumper stickers/license plate frames, etc.):

Invasive much?

It’s precisely things like this that are contributing to the list of reasons that the Bumblefucked household will be vacating the state of California when our lease is up.

Today is Thursday. I have an Orchard Bank card payment due on Sunday. I logged into my account to make a payment today. It told me that I had to make a “Rush Payment” for $12.95 in order to avoid a $35 late fee. Say what? Remember kids, today is Thursday and the payment is not due until Sunday. Make sense? Yeah, not to me either.

Orchard Bank can suck it!

I seriously hate them.

In the Bumblefucked household we just got one of those nifty little reports in the mail from the Social Security Administration that tells you how much you have paid into Social Security and what your expected benefits are shaping up to be.

Today I actually read the paper that came with this little report. On the front it says “Will Social Security still be around when I retire?” Here is the answer, with the bolded parts my emphasis:

Yes. The Social Security taxes you now pay go into the Socia Security Trust Funds and are used to pay benefits to current beneficiaries. The Social Security Board of Trustees now estimates that based on current law, in 2041, the Trust Funds will be depleted. Because people are living longer and the birth rate is low, the ratio of workers to beneficiaries is falling. Therefore, the taxes that are paid by workers will not be enough to pay the full benefit amounts scheduled.

However, this does not mean that Social Security benefit payments would disappear. Even if modifications to the program are not made, there would still be enough funds in 2041 from taxes paid by workers to pay about $780 for every $1,000 in benefits scheduled.

Wow. Looks like Social Security will be paying out less than 80% of what is due to people when the Bumblefucked household hits retirement age.

If you were waiting for something to jumpstart your retirement savings this is it. I am going to log into Vanguard right now to set up an automated bi-weekly investment for the Bumblefucked household.

Thursday afternoon I was finally able to get through to a real person to file for unemployment in California. Imagine my dismay when she told me that I would have to file in Ohio. Why? Because I had a claim in that state last year and did not exhaust all of the available benefits.

This sucks for so many reasons. First, Ohio pays less the California for weekly unemployment checks. That is a problem since I have California rent and not Ohio rent. Difference in rent? Over $1,000 a month. It also sucks because my employer here in SoCal paid me $10,000 more a year than the one in Ohio. Hopefully the Ohio people will adjust my unemployment to reflect my most recent salary. It also sucks cause when I got this news it was 6pm in Ohio – too late to call.

In other news, I will be praying for the fall of Chase credit cards and Chase Bank in general. On our most recent credit card statement for Chase their finance charge put is $1.07 over the limit. They promptly charged us $39.00 for an over the limit fee. Coincidentally our annual membership fee for the Chase rewards card was $39.00. So, actually, it was that fee that caused use to go over the limit. Regardless, we recently locked in a promo rate on that card. It was paid off and we transferred a balance at 3.99%. Now that card will go back to the default interest rate, which is almost 28%. That is really unfortunate since the card the balance was transferred from had a lower rate than that!

I called Chase and asked to get the fee waived. Apparently they only do that in the case of bank errors. I asked to talk to someone higher up. Guess what? No one can waive an over the limit fee there. A look online shows me that Chase Bank is a bastard to everyone.  Good to know.

My job ended on Friday of last week. Today I tried to file for unemployment. All day long. Most of the time when I called I got a recording telling me that the phones were overloaded and to call back later. Other times I got excited to get to the actual system. And each time I spent almost 4 minutes being told how it is easier and quicker for me to file online. Then it would tell me it was transferring me. To a freaking recording telling me they are too busy to take my call!!!!

Now, I would love to file online. But since I worked in another state in the past 18 months I can only submit my claim over the phone.

I don’t have an actual home phone; just a cell phone. I’m wondering how many of my 700 monthly minutes I will spend trying to file for unemployment? There has seriously got to be a better way to go about things here people!

The kicker is that the unemployment website says that Wednesday and Thursdays are the best days to call in as they are the slower days of the week. As if.

At the beginning of the year I ended my relationship with DreamHost. My sites were having repeated downtime. I switched to LunarPages after hearing good things about them. And I repeatedly have problems accessing my sites.

Apparently there is a nameserver fail that is the problem:

* ns1.lunarbreeze.com returned (SERVFAIL)
* ns2.lunarbreeze.com

D’oh. And the best part is that the server status on my LunarPages account says “Server is OK.” Except, clearly its not. And this happens daily. Time to get a new webhost?

Yesterday I found out that my parents have not made a payment on their condo for the past five months. I discovered this because my dad called to ask my if I could help him post stuff on Craigslist as they had gotten a letter in the mail stating that foreclosure is on the way.  He wanted to get rid of stuff before the foreclosure peeps got it.

I’m over 2,000 miles away from him and he had no digital camera or computer skills, so I did what I could to help.

I posted some ads for the various things he need to sell on Craigslist. And yes, I posted them in the appropriate categories, etc. but the Craigslist hall monitors decided it would be fun to flag a few of those ads for removal!

That is one of the things that I hate the most about Craigslist. The people who have lives so unimportant that they spend their free time looking for ads to flag on Craigslist for no good reason. Clearly my parents need the cash from selling these items. So, it makes me a little angry that some asshole thinks it is a good time to flag ads for removal on Craigslist that are perfectly fine. Actually, that always makes me mad. It’s happened to me when I’ve been trying to sell something in the past.

Of course, I guess I shouldn’t get mad and should instead laugh about how pathetic the lives of the Craigslist hall monitors must be. It is a small comfort, but I still think they are all a bunch of wankers.