MBS Property Problems

[nangel78]

I am riding out the rest of my lease and moving out in the spring. TAA leases are hard to get out of without paying a reletting fee. I have less than 6 months to go. I can honestly say I will not move into another MBS apartment. If I had known they were buying the property we were on, I would not have renewed my lease there. Now that I know, at least I can move out once the lease is up and work toward something better.

[Miradahater]

[quote="apples"]

Have you ever lived on one of his properties? While I agree that some are worse than others due to lack of funds, but not everyone has a bad experience.
...
I do work for MBS and I would like for everyone here to take into consideration that they have some of the best employees I've ever seen. They can't be held responsible for not making repairs when they do not get the supplies. That's why the steal from other units, they are doing what they can to help you.
...

Wow just wow having outed your self as a MBS employee it goes to show you that the "Apple" does not fall far from the tree.

You defend MBS by stating that the offices were blown out due to Hurricane Katrina, however isn't that the same office that pays your salary? Were your checks late or did not come at all? However you are still defending MBS with a fervor that rivals an artist so I can only assume that the payroll office was spared.

Yes I do agree with you when you said that there are some excellent MBS employees, however you are not one of them. Your snide demeanor shows that you have somehow forgotten that the people living at your complex pay your salary. To add to that you have forgotten that many of us also have families and ,oh my god, even pay bills just like MBS employees. When did you forget that we expect the same level of housing as you and the better MBS employees live in.

Finally, I do not agree with all of MBS Companies’ business practices...

What have you done to try and change the practices? I am sure you have told someone about this forum and I am certain that someone above you knows about the Apartmentratings.com site.

Why aren't you or your superiors working to change the coporate image? Are you afraid of Mr. Smuck? Or is it that you just do not care. When will MBS realize that the best way to profitability is through solid customer service.

I only wish that instead of coming here every day that you would do something more productive like write letters to MBS, certified and to the owner himself. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Ohh yess I have been "squeaky" and I can assure you that I will continue to be "squeaky" long after I leave this place. However I have only seen minimal amounts of oil. I guess katrina got that as well. None the less I will make it a point to inform as many people as I possible can to not live in an MBS property.

[CursedbyMBS]

I am riding out the rest of my lease and moving out in the spring. TAA leases are hard to get out of without paying a reletting fee. I have less than 6 months to go. I can honestly say I will not move into another MBS apartment. If I had known they were buying the property we were on, I would not have renewed my lease there. Now that I know, at least I can move out once the lease is up and work toward something better.

Nangel78, I am planning on doing the same. It will cost to much just to get out of my lease early. Unfortunetly you have less time than I.

I also do not think it is worth forking over extra money to MBS just to get out of my lease early. I would rather save it for the next place I choose to live at!

[dwarfnvdr]

Well, I guess we really don't have to worry about MBS running and hiding for much longer. The Houston Chronicle is coming out to our (Leeward/Windward) complex next Monday, November 28 at 6pm. Finally someone will listen to what we have to say, not just pretend to, tell us "they understand" and still do nothing. Come out and voice your opinion, power does rule in numbers! This is not the first story the Chronicle has done on MBS in the recent months, our sister property, Forest Cove I believe it is called, in Seabrook had their water shut off "due to Katrina" a couple months ago, and the reporter is fuming for another story on the crooks! I am going to post flyers today, so keep an eye out. If they take them down, I will keep posting. Everyone have a wonderful holiday, and we will overcome!! :lol:

[Thanks]

Apples, unless you're the lady who contacted me by e-mail about my former website, it seems that your replies are standard mBS protocol.

First e-mail:

"I work for Mr Smuck and have worked for MBS for two years. They have always been good to me. I understand that you are upset and may have had a negative experience with MBS but there is a more diplomatic way in which you handle your situation. Why would you want to hurt all of the MBS employees that are being affected by your very unethical website. I appreciate your reply and really would like to discuss. You may contact me at ..."

Second e-mail:

"Well, this is playing the general public against MBS as a whole! How could you think that it would not affect our employees? If indeed you have an issue with Mr. Smuck than why would you not go the proper route? Hire an attorney. To slander and defame is wrong! Please think about the innocent people that you have brought down. Why...your anger."

After her superiors told her that her claims were out of line, she never contacted me again.

So, are you the same person, or is there an echo in here?

[Miradahater]

Dont forget to post a link to this site so that everyone can se just how bad it is and how they are not alone.

Also please make sure you post your stories at http://apartmentratings.com it looks like there are a few refrences to this post already making the rounds. That is how I found this place.

[Miradahater]

Apples, unless you're the lady who contacted me by e-mail about my former website, it seems that your replies are standard mBS protocol.

why did you shut the site down?

[ct1609]

To me, by the nonsensical post you wrote Thanks, you have a vendetta against Mike Smuck. Have you ever lived on one of his properties? While I agree that some are worse than others due to lack of funds, but not everyone has a bad experience.

So its not Mike Smuck's fault, this is a personal vendetta! So all the lies told to us and poor lack of communication between MBS personnel must be on the employee side.
OH but wait!!!
[quote]I do work for MBS and I would like for everyone here to take into consideration that they have some of the best employees I've ever seen. They can't be held responsible for not making repairs when they do not get the supplies. That's why the steal from other units, they are doing what they can to help you.

You say employees are not responsible when they don't get repairs done because they do not have the supplies. Basically, it sounds as if you are saying, well, its NOBODYS FAULT!
You know what everybody here,... He or She that is "apples' is incorrect, its somebodys fault! Namely Mike Smuck Mr MBS!!
"apples" let me say something to you, calling a spade a spade is not wrong! I implore you to attempt to name one instance when the boss is not to blame. Ultimately it always starts at the top and you are a fool if you think otherwise. When the economy sucks its the Presidents fault, whether he has control or not!! If he is not being informed of the problems in all his units, then it is HIS fault.

I do work for MBS and I would like for everyone here to take into consideration that they have some of the best employees I've ever seen.

If these employees are as good as you say (which I personally do believe) then he is being informed of problems. Which makes him solely responsible for things not being taken care of!

And finally, apartment ratings, the majority of the comments on that site are written by a handful of people, one particular individual more than others, who go in almost daily as different posters and write bad reviews. This one individual posts here as well and they have a hard on for Mike Smuck, not MBS because, truth be known, they do not now, nor have they ever lived on an MBS property. My guess is they are an ex MBS employee.

As I read apartment ratings I can see that several of the complaints sound the same. As an employee of the company it is easy for you to dismiss these complaints as the same person but there are as of today 85 statements written about the place. Only 4 of these say that the management is adequate and only 16 total were happy with there experience(3 of which were written by the staff).
Most of the people living in these complexes are good, hard working people. If you think that the average person would rather spend his or her time b**ching then you are truely an idiot! Your company has backed people into the corner and it should not surprise you that they are pushing back!!!

The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Trust me when I say that if you are relentlessly calling the corporate office, your deposit will be refunded and your items taken care of.

Why should anyone call "relentlessly" to get things done? As a business owner myself I can tell you that if I caught wind of a website such as this, butts would be getting kicked to make my customers HAPPY!

All they can do is call and ask the status from the corporate office once your documents are forwarded for payment. They would love for you to get your deposit back so they do not have to continue to call the corporate office to find out the status and then risk "lying" to you by only repeating to you what they are told by them.

Sounds to me like you are admitting that the corporate office is "lying" to the staff so they in return "lie" to residents.

These onsite employees have lives, they have families to feed and bills to pay. Please consider carefully the effect your words here might have on them individually.
Going to small claims court to get your deposit back is not expensive and you will get your money back. The process is not that long.

YOU need to remember what you have written about the onsite employees and stop "lying" to them so that they don't have to lie to us! Once again it starts at the top of the ladder not the bottom!
One last thing, if you are so positive that "relentlessly" calling will get refunds back, then why do you recommend going to small claims court? If your company was honest then that wouldn't need to be done, Would it? It must make you proud to work for a company like MBS that recomends suing them for something that is rightfully theirs!
To anyone out their that is in Houston, Austin, & San Antonio please take the time to go to the websites for channels 2 & 13 in Houston and write a letter to their troubleshooters reccomending this sight so they can read first hand what an employee of MBS recommends. Also call the Houston Chronical and voice your opinion.
Anybody want some "apple pie"???

[PissedEnoughToPost]

I wanted to share my experience with my apartment complex since MBS seems to be such a hot topic.

First off, I have NEVER posted to a website or forum or whatever these are...I just googled MBS because I am fed up beyond possible belief at the incompetence running these aparments (Management has people installing carpet above my apartment at 7 pm, of course not during the day). I graduated college and moved to Houston around a year ago and moved into the Briarmeadows apartment complex. It seemed like a very nice, ritzy and quiet apartment complex. I signed a lease. Soon after I moved in, the Masters of Bull Sh*t started working their magic. Since I have lived here:

-Maintenance and management refuse to change our lights outside our apartment. The reason being that the wiring is faulty and they have already burned two - YES 2!!!! lights trying to replace them. This was two months ago - no fix!

-Everyone and their mother has moved out paving the way for the new tenants!!! which signed leases and pay half what I pay for rent. Once the word got out, we were at full capacity...and all the people who live here are either party animals, sell drugs, or do both - but only when I come home from work. They sleep during the day....and signed 2 year lease specials!

-Both motorized entrance gates broke about 4 months ago. FIX - leave them open at all times! Not only does that make things much safer here, they refuse to refund the $100 I spent on two gate openers.

-A tree fell on our perimeter fencing, slightly bending the fence. FIX - remove the whole section.

-Three units in my building alone have been robbed within less than a month of the gates / fence issue. Oh, and a tenant in my building got stabbed in the leg when someone tried to steal his car while he got in. He lives about 10 feet from where he parks, which happens to be where they removed the fence.

-Our sewage lines have backed up three separate times since I have lived here. Each time at night and each fix coming several days later.

-Their is nowhere to park around our apartment because of the amount of people now living in our building ???? (we all have one bedroom apartments, except now each aparment has five people). Ironically, the covered parking (which no one actually pays for) spans the whole side of the property but they refuse to make it free. The rates they quoted me were $20 a month more than my neighbor. FIX - $15 Parking Tags. This way you know who doesn't live here...hmm, so how does this fix the problem. I now know that someone who doesn't live here / pay parks in my spot.

The kicker to all this is that the bastards just installed an extensive and real expensive sprinkler system that they leave on full blast every morning (we pay for water, by the way). Even though the sprinklers primarily water the sidewalks and cars only, they refuse to turn them off. You literally have to run on wet sidewalks and time your entrance to the car just right...or you'll get hosed by the sprinklers! Don't break your neck running, either!

Wheeesh! Sorry to post such a long reply, but i've never been so frustrated with people blatantly walking over us. They lie about fixing things to your face every time, say "gates are just a false sense of security anyway", complain about money and then spend money re-landscaping every month...literally! Every month...

Is their anything I can do to break my lease, receive money back from them or just generally screw them over or am I just screwed?

Thanks

[Thanks]

why did you shut the site down?

Nothing at all to do with mBS...just a software problem that made maintaning the site very time consuming.

The site was meant be an archive of tenants' experiences with MBS, one that tenants could update as their their situations progressed. The software used was the same as on this forum. You would locate your apartment name, create a new thread, and there would be your own place to tell your story. When you had more info or updates to your situation, you could come back and add to it, like a mini-blog.

The problem was that I couldn't locate a software "fix" that allowed only the original author to reply to their own posts. People would write their stories, but would end up getting responses from people other than themselves. I would then have to keep erasing them.

While I do have some time to devote to anti-Smuck activities, I don't have quite enough time to monitor many people's stories.
If someone wants to volunteer to be a moderator for this problem, I will gladly put the site back up. I think such a story archive will be very useful when some gets a newscast or article written about their complex so the reporter can have a website to reference to. (For example with dwarf above! Way to go!)

Reporter: "For more horror stories directly from tenants, visit www.smuckoff.com"

Hopefully this would lead to a snowballing effect, with more people 'coming out'...enough to maybe get noticed by more reporters, agencies, etc.

Thanks!