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My furious email to Sun Cove Realty in Tampa, FL after dragging me along on a property rental long enough to lose it. No deposits, signed agreements, or any other method to secure the property were allowed. Truly horrible customer service.

And yes, I really did CC the property owner after finding their information on the property appraiser’s website.

Hello,

Recently I had the total displeasure of doing business with your company and I wanted to let you know about it. We originally saw your company’s unprofessional ad in the Towers of Channelside on February 24th. I say unprofessional because the main image listing is not even of the actual towers, but rather, a computer generated image of what the towers were going to look like after their construction 6 years ago. Also, it appears you used a listing provider that automatically posted it on Craigslist, but truncated the title so the word “Channelside” never even appeared in the ad (great for searching, I’m sure). It actually said “Towers of Channel…” Finally, there was no square footage listed whatsoever in the listing.

Despite the laughably bad ad, I was able to find it because I monitor Craigslist and other outlets like a hawk for the Towers because I have viewed several units there and knew that, unless this unit was stripped to concrete walls and had no running water, I would be a lessee right away. I was able to get the information I needed on the property, no thanks to your ad, but by viewing the Tax Assessor’s website which gave me the square footage (which I could then reference the floor plan). So, on the very day it was posted, I contacted your office and asked to sign a lease that day, sight unseen because I knew this was where I wanted to be.

Of course, following a common theme of having to beg to do business with your company, your office refused to let me sign a lease sight unseen but rather asked me to pre-apply online for a mere ~$35 per person. Fortunately, I didn’t take the bait on that money pit. So, we scheduled the necessary “formalities” prior to signing a lease, the showing with one of your agents. I understand that, being tenant occupied, there is an advance notice required prior to view the property, but the nearest appointment was 3 days later. This made me incredibly nervous due to the Towers being a hot commodity, but I figured this would be no big deal – so confident that we would be able to make a deal happen that we let our current landlord know we would be signing a lease the following day (our mistake, I know).

Then, 20 minutes before our showing, we get a call from your office saying our appointment was canceled because the real estate agent had a vehicular emergency. Frustrating (my roommate had canceled a 3 hour seminar to attend the showing), but understandable. Unfortunately, we were leaving town this weekend and needed an appointment before Friday. However, your office could not provide us another showing date until the following weekend, March 9th! This would obviously be a problem, not just for the unlikely event that the property would still be available, but that we must give a 30 day notice at our current property.

Since your office had provided us the agent’s cell phone number the night before, once the meeting was canceled, we reached out to her directly to see if there was anything we could do to schedule a showing that day since the tenants were already notified (Wednesday the 27th). She said she would check with the main office – why she doesn’t have the ability to manage her own calendar is beyond me, but another point of frustration with your company. It wasn’t for several more hours when we finally got a call back, setting up an appointment for today, Thursday, at 3:30.

Finally, early today, we get a call from your main office, letting us know the property has been rented and our appointment canceled.

I have never before had to beg a company to do business with them until now, but I can now say I have had that displeasure.

I have CC’d my roommate, who was also dragged along for this exercise in futility, as well as the property owner, which as I stated before, was available from the tax assessor’s office.

Thanks,

Dan

Here’s the ad’s fantastic listing picture of the Towers. Completely computer generated as the buildings in the background would indicate to anyone spending more than 2.5 seconds composing a listing:

textastrophe:

The Orginal Ad:

My conversation with the ad poster:

One of my first posts on here was to mention how I loved the website DontEvenReply.com (that apparently everyone had heard of already). Well, here’s a new one in the same vein, called Textastrophe.com.