As a former customer of 17 years, it has been my experience that Stanley Samuels is dishonest and…read morevery deceitful in their reporting. Their claims of what they will do for you and what they deliver are worlds apart. We have over $130,000.00 dollars in damages and lost income because of the negligence of Stanley Samuels and their agent Bob Townsend. The majority of the damage was caused by two large dogs the agent allowed on the property, but the lease clearly stated there was only an outside cat was allowed. This was a clear breach and according to everyone that has been in the house the past year states the smell of the dogs hits you the moment the front door is opened yet Mr. Townsend & Mr. Stanley never reported this and allowed these dogs to remain in the property and destroy carpets, doors etc.
We had our insurance inspector & hired an independent inspector to evaluate the damage to the property, since the agent Bob Townsend and Mark Stanley refused to provide us with reports and photographs of our property. Mark Stanley replied to our office when we were trying to settle this matter, "We have reinspected the property and do not accept that the tenant has caused damage to the property to the extent you claim. There has been a door replaced by the tenant which remains unpainted, and this is acknowledged, but your assertion that there are numerous items of damage is impossible to support. The property has been leased to this family for some 12 years and also rented I understand for 5 years prior to that to other parties. If you believe that the property is anything but reasonable condition given 17 years of renting out, we must agree to disagree."
We obtained historic satellite images from Google Earth going back to 2003 as part of our investigation, it showed the pool & spa, which the tenant was responsible for maintaining. Mr. Townsend stated he was going to have to talk with the tenants about them not maintaining the pool because it was their responsibility, yet we were charged for the cleaning and super chlorination of the pool at the end of 2003. By the end of 2004 the satellite images show a green scummy pool, but it wasn't until Jan 5th 2006 we received notice from Mr. Townsend that a trade's person provided an estimate for replacement of the pool pump because it was tripping and a patch kit for the pool lining. The photos at that time show a dark green algae, scummy pool. It is clear by the photographs the pump more than likely was burning out because the tenants were not cleaning the pool, which was a breach of the lease. Mr. Townsend told us it was due to normal wear & tear but that pump and all equipment was new in Feb 2001 and the dogs more likely the dogs tore the lining of both the pool and spa. Mr. Townsend stated he would take care of the pool in 2006, so we were shocked to learn in 2013 he never did because he kept reporting everything was fine with the tenancy.
These photos also showed that the tenants had been driving on the lawn over the irrigation system for over 10 years and parking up to two cars on top of the system. Mr. Townsend stated, "I have talked with the tenants, they assure me the cars are not parked on the lawns, and the watering system still operates, although their preference is now to use sprinklers. We received a quote from The Irrigation Doctor stating our system was inadequate and it was due to normal wear/tear and age and not the tenants fault. Yet, they were charging us over three thousand dollars just to replace sprinkler heads nothing else. When I questioned the Irrigation Doctor about the statement about the tenant they said that Mr. Townsend called them out for a quote on a total replacement and not a repair or inspection job and that statement was put on their due to the many conversations she had with Mr. Townsend and what the tenant told them. Once again we were lied to by Mr. Townsend & Mr. Stanley backed up his agent. Why would Stanley Samuels allow these tenants to stay in a property when they had so many breaches in the lease, owed years of water payments to us, destroyed our property, yet Stanley Samuels did nothing, even tried to get us to keep these tenants in the property and pay for the damage.
To this date we have not been reimbursed by Stanley Samuels for any of this damage, even though they claimed they turned this matter over to their insurance company. Our insurance company has refused our claims because of the long term neglect of this agency, their failure to do inspections which they have no records of and report this damage to our office in a timely manner. You can see our story on Youtube titled Nightmare on Farnsworth Drive and judge for yourself if you would trust them with your property
