We lived at a property managed by Ronson Real Estate Services for 3 years from July 2011 thru June 2014. Due to the nature of my husband's career, we knew that we would relocate to another state in less than 5 years so renting was a better option than purchasing a home. This company proved to be unresponsive, unprofessional and unreasonable on a number of occasions. I really struggled with leaving this review because this is a small company and believe strongly in supporting small businesses, but the problems that we experienced need to be shared so that others can make an informed decision about working with Ronson Real Estate.
During our stay in the house, the furnace stopped working on 1/4/13. I called Ronson at 4pm on that date. They contacted a Sommer heating and cooling repair service who called me at 10:00pm that night to inform that they would be out for repair first thing the next morning. Even though it was a cold January night, I accepted this as reasonable since it was a Friday when the furnace stopped working. Saturday morning came and went, still no furnace repair person. I gave the Sommer a call to get an ETA at 12:30pm and again at 2:50pm to be told that the the technician was not feeling well so he would not be coming out to make the repairs. Called Ronson Real Estate 2x that day, left messages with their answering service who assured me that someone would call me right back. I did not hear from Ronson Real Estate or the repair service they contracted with until Monday 1/7/13 when the repair tech showed up at the residence. The exact same problem occurred on in August of 2013 when the central air unit stopped working. There was poor communication, promises of when someone would show up and after several days a repair tech came out to service the unit.
By the time we got ready to vacate the residence in June 2014, we should have expected that the lack of communication and poor practices would continue. Our final walkthrough with a Ronson rep was supposed to occur on on the afternoon 6/27/14. We called and emailed to inquire about their ETA. There was no response. We stayed at the unit from 11:30am until 7:30pm to handle last minute clean up beyond what we had already paid a professional cleaning service to do, so their was more than enough time for a Ronson rep to show up. Still nothing.
The house was clean, the lawns were mowed, minor repairs were made, trash was placed in proper containers for pick up on trash day the following week. We took picture and assumed that all was well. Since so no one came to the walkthrough for us to inspect the unit together and return the keys, we emailed them and told them we would send the keys via certified mail.
A few weeks later, we received our security deposit settlement and a long list of things they charged us for. Some items on the list were perfectly legitimate like scratches on door frames caused by my daughters wheelchair, the broken stopper in the half bathroom and lightbulbs that we did not replace. We agreed that we should pay for those issues and had no problem with do so.
However, we were also charged $100 dollars for not mowing the lawn and trimming the bushes, but we had picture evidence and a bill from a lawn care service as evidence that this was done the day we moved out. There was a charge of $50 for cabinet doors that were missing screws, but our original walkthrough paperwork and subsequent emails show that this was a problem that was there before we even moved in in 2011. We were charged $50 for not cleaning the inside of the fireplace that we never used because Ronson couldn't tell us whether or not the fireplace was in working condition when we moved in. We were charged $75 for leaving trash in the trash can. Really? We paid to have someone remove excess trash but figured leaving trash in trash bins that are picked up by the trash collector on a weekly basis was reasonable. So after making several unreasonable deductions from our security deposit, they failed to return the $550 pet deposit and gave no explanation for why they did not.
After several weeks of emails and pictures to Ronson Real Estate, they refunded the $550 pet deposit. I honestly think they just forgot that we even provided that deposit. But the other $300 that they could not provide reasonable evidence for for withholding has never been refunded. read more
