We are long-term tenants of the Spaces - The Artisphere since it opened back in 2018. Even during the pandemic, we continued to be loyal customers and never caused any troubles or delayed any payments.
The office space started out great and it's super spacious with the patio space and open work concept. Upon opening of the office space, there was even a barista serving us coffee but ever since the pandemic hit, this feature disappeared understandably.
The management during the opening of the center has been very great and I must highlight the professionalism and attendance of the Spaces Team on-site which is our primary point of contact for customer and employee interactions. They are very tangible and super responsive. Unfortunately, the team seems to be tied to a managerial team that changes up things lately that are very disappointing from a loyal customer perspective as one of our following experiences show:
When we signed the lease for our own office in 2019, we were granted to have a company logo at the directory at no additional cost as an early bird special. Silly us only had a verbal agreement with the people in charge of the center back then and now, 2 years later with new management we receive invoices dated back all the way to 2019 charging us the set-up fee of more than $600 and a stack of monthly invoices in the amount of $25 per month since we moved in as "logo display".
Upon addressing this, the team at the office space was very helpful and understood right away, but unfortunately, that's where we noticed that Spaces is gigantic machinery that is very bureaucratic and doesn't care about member loyalty even throughout a pandemic. You need to open tickets and the recent management pretty much avoids talking to you unless you're interested in leasing more office space. Spaces HQs look at you as if you were a number and there is no tangible way to interact with the leadership team or accounting department whatsoever. The Spaces HQs also didn't find any evidence that we ever confirmed the order of the signage at the directory, so it was basically us as a small business having to dance after the whistle of this big corporate company. And bear in mind, all this happened shortly after we renewed for another 2 years.
So be aware and have any included, promised perks and benefits written down to avoid any bad surprises. Even though our ongoing dispute, Spaces went ahead and withdrew a large sum with our rent that was due. This is the feedback of their billing department:
"I know this seems excessive and incorrect to the customer, however, they previously received no charges for this service and this invoice applied all of them at once. If they had not received the service or had been billed at the time this would warrant a credit, however, the charges are valid.
I hope this has been helpful and if you need assistance in the future, please reach out again."
I absolutely don't know what happened with the leadership team at Spaces, but ever since the pandemic happened their business practices have changed to maximizing profit at all costs it seems. We are expecting them to charge for toilet paper use or any other way to lure money out of loyal and maybe even new members.
Started off great but come on, you can be way more personable with your members! A lot of previous tenants had the same issue in the past but we were never able to relate until now.
So it's understandable that people move over to the WeWork across the street for A) free beverages and B) hassle-free business relationships so that you can actually focus on your business goals instead of writing reviews like this and dealing with Spaces Billing departments. read more