My wife and I rent a home in Vollintine-Evergreen in Memphis, TN. The day we moved in, in mid-June 2016, after an exhausting move from North Carolina, we experienced a leak from a faulty water heater after activating our water service. After repairing the leak and reporting the issue to the property management company, the owner or the realty company insisted on replacing the floors of the house, despite the small nature of the leak. We were never told if it was the owner or the realty company that insisted on the repairs.
We were first told by McCabe Construction that it would be just two rooms that would have flooring replaced, so we moved as much as possible of our unpacked possessions to a room we believed would not be emptied. Typically, I work from home, but working from home couldn't happen while construction was happening, and we also couldn't unpack our possessions. We arrived home from work on the first day to find essentially all of our possessions in the home moved to a portable storage unit in the yard. This was the start of many instances of being told one thing by McCabe and having another occur. They even packed some of our food that was on a shelf in the dining room instead of simply moving it to the kitchen!
From that point on, everything we were told was different from reality. We'd be told an element of the repair would be happening one day, and come back to find something else had occurred. We'd be told something would be finished one day, and come home to find it didn't happen. Throughout, Mr. McCabe was difficult to reach by either phone or text, and when reached was vague in his answers about the work. McCabe's workers even changed the locks on our front door at one point and never saw fit to tell us; we arrived home from work to find our keys no longer worked (there were keys in a lockbox, but we were not informed that we'd need to look there to get into the house). Our cat, who we expressly requested be kept in the bathroom, was let out repeatedly. Our internet cable was broken (McCabe has promised to pay for it). All of this happened in about a week's time. The food that was supposedly packed into the storage unit never appeared again. Our possessions, once returned to our home, were left in places that made no sense, haphazardly, even though we told Mr. McCabe which rooms contained which boxes, and this is causing us much work in getting everything back in order.
Frankly, my wife and I were treated as if our rights as tenants did not matter one bit throughout this repair. We were ignored, disrespected, and lied to repeatedly about the schedule and the scope of the work. While the work itself was professional enough, as we did not order the repair ourselves, it's immaterial to us. We were disregarded and not given the most basic courtesies as the occupants of this home. It is nice to have central AC and new flooring, but we were not treated well throughout the process; ideally, the repairs ought to have been done when there were no renters in the home. For that matter, we were told we could stay in the home as the work was being done. As mentioned above, one of us typically works from home but could not during this time. There were large, loud fans and dehumidifiers emitting heat in our home for about 3 days, and it was as high as 99 degrees Fahrenheit in the home during this time. When the carpet was removed and the floors were not yet replaced, there were dusty sub-floors in most rooms of the house. We were told we could stay here, and we did, but we are young adults - we have no children, no elderly, and no sick people in our family - we could not have had a crawling baby here, someone with asthma, or someone highly sensitive to heat.
I imagine that the owner, whoever they are, was treated respectfully throughout the process, and you likely would be as well if you hired Mr. McCabe and his crew yourself. But the tenants caught in the middle, i.e., the ones not paying him, were basically abused and mistreated. McCabe acted as if we didn't matter at all. read more
