Unable to communicate at the most basic level, slow at everything, negligent of their responsibilities, ludicrously overpriced, willfully/maliciously incompetent, and bordering on a criminal organization (except a criminal organization would be run much better). These are just a few of my observations and opinions on Empire Condominium Professionals. Unlike what their company name would suggest, there is nothing "professional" at all about them. There is no customer service ethos whatsoever - they never apologize or admit any wrongdoing when they mess up. Empire conducts themselves as if you are inconveniencing them by being a paying client. Quite possibly the worst company I have ever had the misfortune of doing business with.
During my time on the HOA board of our condo complex, the prime topic of every meeting we had was "when are we finally going to dump Empire?" Getting them on site to fix basic things would take ages and they would charge grossly inflated labor fees. Emails to Empire asking for support and assistance would often go ignored, leaving us to deal with problems on our own. They dropped the ball repeatedly, in one case, by not paying a common area electricity bill which caused our septic pump to be shut off with disastrous results. They didn't care - everything is, somehow, never their fault. Empire was terrible at negotiating contracts, waiting until the very last minute to give us landscaping and snow quotes to review. Everything they came up with for quotes was so grossly overpriced that I hope Empire was at least receiving kickbacks for shoving garbage contracts on us. The residents would constantly complain that things weren't fixed or handled by Empire in a timely manner. They were terrible to work with and made almost everything about running our HOA more difficult than it should have been.
Unfortunately, I never got around to seeing them dumped as a management company because I sold my condo, and good lord, what an awful experience Empire made that to be - as if they needed to give me one last slap in the face goodbye. The buyers needed Empire to send over boilerplate documents pertaining to HOA financial health and they couldn't even do that correctly. First, Empire informed me that it would cost $350 in get those documents, but since we needed them in time for closing, we had to pay an additional $100 for rush processing. I was forced to begrudgingly drive an hour to Empire's office to hand deliver them a $450 post office money order for a copy of these simple documents. If you're thinking that sounds like criminal extortion, then I wholeheartedly agree! But did paying that $100 rush processing fee get us the documents on time? Nope - it sure didn't. Empire was careless, apathetic, and took as much time as they wanted sending us these documents, causing us to miss the closing date and bringing immense stress and frustration to the condo sale. Their demeanor in response to dropping the ball and holding up the entire sale was complete callousness. They didn't care in the slightest. When I asked for them to at least refund my $100 "rush processing fee" since they didn't, in fact, rush the documents or provide the service that was expected, they of course refused. Empire made every comically bad faith argument in the book to try to deny any wrongdoing.
I can't advise you strongly enough to avoid hiring Empire to manage your condominium complex. Find literally any other company to do it. Whatever money you think you are saving by hiring them as a lowest bidder will be lost in the form of wasted time, frustration, exorbitant fees, and carelessness. All the while they will deny any responsibility for failing you and will make you feel as if they couldn't care less about you as a customer. These people are literally the worst. read more