Market Place Homes They dropped the ball then changed the terms instead of correcting their mistake Livonia Michigan

I have email correspondences that backup every claim made in the original report. If anyone is interested please contact me and I will forward the information to you.

The lease agreement (i have that too) does state that the resident is responsible for lawn care. After reading the lease I contacted Marketplace homes via email asking about that and several other points I didn't agree with in the lease. The response about lawn care was:

Me: 'Item 11. "Lawn and landscape care". Am I responsible for this? Isn't there an association that takes care of this?"

Marketplace Employee: "Item 11: Yes, this is a townhome, and there is an association that takes care of the grounds.  The homeowner pays the townhouse fee, you do not."

Had the Marketplace Homes employee said "You are responsible for the lawn" I would have had the choice to not rent the townhouse or rent it and accept that I would be responsible for it. I asked them to hire someone or reduce my rent enough to cover costs and I would hire a landscaper myself. Their response to me all last year was "we don’t have anyone, we made a mistake, and we can’t reduce your rent". Their response should have been "we are sorry for this and we will make it right."

The Marketplace Homes employee instead said that the homeowner is responsible for it. I have dozens of emails that document the nightmare of me trying to get them to respond to me and then to respond to the landscaper that I had to find and then me trying to get them to pay the landscaper. I still don’t know if he ever got paid. Marketplace homes never responded to me. The landscaper won’t return my calls so I assume he didn’t get paid.

So does the email statement made by the Marketplace homes act as a legal addendum/change to the lease? If so then Marketplace homes did not honor their end of the lease agreement. If the email statement is not a legal change then a Marketplace homes employee lied to me or made a mistake and waited a year to resolve it. Either way Marketplace Homes made a mistake and chose not to resolve it.

At no point did Marketplace homes attempt to work with me. The only interaction I had with them was me asking them “what’s going on?” and them saying “we will get back to you” or “we can’t fix it” followed by weeks of no response until I again send them an email asking “what’s going on?”  Last year at the end of summer I sent an email stating that I would not be involved in lawn care this year (2013). I received no response until this year when they had the nerve to tell me that neighbors were complaining and that I should "mow my lawn".  This is when I contacted them and told them I wasn’t going to get sucked into this again and reminded them  (by forwarding every single email to them) about their responsibility to take care of the lawn.

The part about me getting a "great value" and the rents "rising" might have held water if they did it before the lawn issue came up months later. My lease ended months ago. I contacted Marketplace homes before it was over asking "when will I get a new lease". The response I got was "We would send a new lease.  I’ll check with the Renewals Manager on the lease, and if the homeowner has renewed yet." That was March 19 2013. Several months passed with no response.

I chose not to renew because Marketplace homes dropped the ball during the first lease. At no point did they try and resolve the issue. The only effort anyone at marketplace homes made to resolve this issue was to raise my rent $200 based on an incorrect market comparison with a home that has twice the square footage. I have PDF files of these comparison homes. One is a large single family home compared to a similar sized townhome with my address. The home with my address doesn’t really exist.

It’s a mistake or purposely faked (not by market place homes. It has existed online for over a year. I remember seeing it when I was originally looking to rent my townhouse).  I informed them of their mistake about this also and never received a response.  They also asked me to sign a new lease assuming responsibility for the lawn. The $200 increase would have been fine or I might have agreed to lawn care but when they hit me with both I decided I wasn’t going to stand for anymore terrible customer service.

Ripoff Reports is NOT meant to punish companies and cost them money. It’s here to help other consumers avoid issues like the one I ran into. If a report here ends up costing businesses money...it’s their own fault. Lawn care at my residence was $140 a month. $140 X 6 months is $840 a year. Seems like a VERY small amount of money to lose a tenant over. Their response here instead of an “I’m sorry that happened” I get accused me of not being honest.

The response to this report is so far off the mark that I wonder if the person who responded knew any of the real/related facts. If they didn't then they should do more research before responding to reports or sending me threatening emails. If they did have the facts it appears that they ignored them.  I withheld employee names last time and this time even though the responder chose not to extend that courtesy to me.  I created a new user name with my full name. The next time I find a false response here I will be posting every email I have ever sent to or received from Marketplace homes in its entirety so that everyone can see what (and how much) actually took place including the email I got from the CEO tonight.

If you think my description of their handling of this issue sounds crazy just wait until you read the play by play. Stay very far away from this company. Who wants to bet whether or not I will get my security deposit back? I have to hire a contractor, photographer and cleaning company and get notarized statements from them to take with me to court if they refuse to refund it. At the end of all this it will cost me apx $3500 in moving expenses and I MIGHT get my security deposit back or end up spending at least that much in legal fees to pursue it.