Our experience with Ardent is a mixed bag with positive and negative results, but the negative far exceeded the positive. We are a 12 unit building in Atlanta who employed Ardent as our management company, I am the President of the Association and was during the last year or so of Ardent's employment. We let them go for multiple reasons such as breaching of contract, bullying and poor/inconsistent communication. Here are only 10 of those reasons:
1. They breached their contract and charged a higher monthly fee. We told them no, but they did it anyway. They simply charged this and since they had control of our bank account, they simply paid themselves this new amount with nothing we could do.
2. They breached their contract and adjusted the payment system for lease management. Again, we told them no, but they did it anyway. Again, they controlled our bank account.
3. I did end up calling our bank and they alerted us that they were not able to take any direction from me because Ardent opened the account. When I spoke with Ardent to get access to stop the kind of behavior they were doing, they would not oblige.
4. They bullied us, as mentioned in 1 and 2 for some examples, because they weren't going to be met with any consequences.
5. On their website, they mention, "If we don't prepare your financial reports accurately and deliver them on or before the 15th of each month, fire us immediately." They were constantly inconsistent here and was another reason they were let go.
6. On their website, they mention, "If we don't return your phone calls or emails within 2 hours, fire us immediately." They were constantly inconsistent here and was another reason they were let go.
7. So many times, when we needed work done, we looked for vendors ourselves as relying on them to do this. This task was their responsibility, per their contract, but they were so inefficient at this that it wasn't worth it to wait on them.
8. They assigned about 4 new managers to us in a 1 year time who were rather new, which isn't a large problem, but simply took some time to get a handle on things. Once they started to get more familiar with the process and our Association, they were gone and someone new would come on.
9. When the transition process came about, we wanted it done earlier to which they responded no. We fought for this, but once again, since they controlled our bank account, they simply charged us for it and did it. There were also missing documents, bill pay failures on their behalf and failure to forward over invoices even 10 months after the final split. This resulted in multiple late charges.
10. When I included them in an email to speak about their actions and our progress since their removal, I was met with a "Cease and Desist" letter to stop libel and defamation and to retract all of my statements of such within 10 days. That letter sparked this review.
A business that pushes to silence their customers for speaking about their experiences is one that deserves to be mentioned.
It took us a long time to decide to self-manage because it's a heavy task, but having control over our bank accounts, how we spend our money, saving more of it, and the ease of having tasks get completed, for the most part, much quicker, has been wonderful for us in the long run. We have more money than we've had in our account in years and that's not from raising dues or special assessing at all per Ardent's constant recommendations, especially during high inflationary times. They believed the answer was to spend more money instead of being more efficient with it. Any management company the prioritizes their well-being over the well-being of the association which they are hired to manage is, once again, one to be more than cautious about. And if the management company is not qualified enough to do know the difference, that again, is one to be more than cautious about.
I understand everyone has different experiences with different companies, people, situations, but for us, Ardent consistently failed to meet the demand of their contractual obligations and, furthermore, bullied us when we spoke up against this treatment. We are very happy to see them gone. read more