At the time I hired Urban Apartment Locators this spring, this page had about 10 or 11 Yelp reviews - nearly all favorable. Don't know what happened to them, but based upon my experience, I wonder...
I hired Martin toward the end of May to help me rent my $2k/mth condo. He seemed very professional. He was very good about touching base with me on the phone and was always pleasant.
The unit, however, sat on the market for some 2 months. He had a number of showings, but did not do any open houses. He had said those don't usually work for rentals; I had said don't worry about that then. (This becomes important later.)
So I flew back to Chicago to meet with other leasing agents since my verbal contract with Martin was non-exclusive. After meeting separately with two other agents, I left their contact info as well as my old work laptop (with company logo on the screen saver) sitting out on what had been a completely pristine granite counter top. There was no mistaking the fact that I was home.
That night, while cleaning out my old office, Martin called. Suddenly, he has renters who coincidentally saw the place while I was out and absolutely insisted on filling out applications immediately. I found the timing very interesting.
The problem, however, came when I tried to clean the kitchen counter before flying out of town again. After wiping the surface down, I turned on the disposal. Nothing. I turned it off... reached inside... and pulled out a 4-1/4" metal nut pick!!! Huh? I did not even remember owning a nut pick. I know everything in that unit worked - including the disposal - at the time I left Chicago.
The next day, I spoke with Martin. When asked if he could explain how a nut pick could have ended up inside the disposal when there had been absolutely nothing on the counter top, he did not sound surprised at all. He said in very calm, measured tones "I cannot." He then suggested that perhaps, since I had asked him to water the plants on my balcony, the pick had been outside and gotten stuck to the bottom of the watering can.
I said "Let me see if I got this straight. You are suggesting that the metal pick somehow adhered itself to the hard, molded plastic underside of the watering can, and when you put the can in the sink to fill it up the pick went from completely horizontal to completely vertical and dropped down the center of the disposal. That's your position?" He said "yes."
Even if it had happened that way, that still doesn't explain why - when the disposal was turned on and made that awful sound they make when they break - he did not call to tell me there was a problem. But I digress.
Since internet sleuthing did not turn up a link between him and his potential renters, I went ahead with their application. I flew back to Chicago a few weeks later to pack up. As I was packing the kitchen drawers, I found another nut pick. Turns out I did own a set of nut picks (I'm in my 40's; I may have gotten these 10 or 20 years ago as a gift - who knows?).
The problem here was that I found this other pick - identical to the one in the disposal except the handle was not ripped off - wedged at the very back of the drawer, underneath the shelving paper. Almost like it was hiding, you might say...
In all fairness, I will say that it does not appear that anything was stolen. I remain, however, completely creeped out by my experience. You can choose to believe the plastic watering can story if you wish. In my mind, however, I can connect a much straighter set of dots by imagining that Martin was using my condo for an unauthorized purpose. If he truly doesn't know what happened, it means he allowed someone else to use my unit and rummage through the kitchen drawer until s/he found a particular item, which is even more disconcerting. At the very least, it would seem that Martin allowed someone who had been viewing the unit out of his sight, to rummage through my kitchen drawer and slam a nutpick into the disposal. Seems like a stretch, but regardless, not an attractive option either.
The disposal was $150 to fix. Not enough to be worth filing a small claim, not enough for a prosecutor to pursue a criminal charge. So here I am. Unfortunately, my moving company - whose roughly dozen glowing Yelp reviews formed the basis of my decision to hire them - was not particularly better. If you have nothing else to do, read on at LT Moving in Chicago. read more