Apartment Complex Nightmare
 

I'm at my wits end.

To preface, I am a full time law student, with exams coming up next week. For those of you who aren't aware of what that's like, it's a period of intense study and stress, since you don't have much time, no matter how much work you've been doing all semester, to get a grasp of an entire subject matter.

I live in an apartment complex that isn't exactly luxury. Tenants are usually either college students, graduate students, or severely disadvantaged city residents living in government subsidized units.

Anyway, mid-March my roommate informed me that we had to be treated for bedbugs, even though I am extremely clean (the worst I get is clothes on the floor sometimes) and there were no traces of bedbugs whatsoever. No dark spots on my sheets (which are white), no evidence of bites, nothing when I shined my flashlight into dark crevices. However, we had to submit to a really inconvenient preparation system...all our clothing was laundered and tied up in plastic bags, everything cleaned out of drawers, everything hung in my closet was taken out and bagged. Essentially it looks like we are moving out, with everything in plastic bags and bins.

First two treatments came and went, the third time they wouldn't spray because I accidentally left a lone shirt hanging in my closet. Then they came again a few days later, and since my roommate and I were not notified, it wasn't prepared for the spraying. So my roommate calls Saturday and schedules another spraying for today, and tells me...5pm yesterday afternoon.

Once I get home from the library I clean up everything, I bag everything, take out all the trash, strip the beds, do the whole thing as thoroughly as I can. Since I had a ton of work to do earlier, I was up doing this until 3am. I wake up the next morning, bag my sheets and pillows do another sweep and make sure the bags are secured, and go to class. Since I can't be in my apartment 6 hours after the spraying and they usually come between 11am and 2, I stay at the library until close and get home at 12:15.

...and they didn't spray again! I have been essentially living out of plastic bags and dealing with these preparations over a month. It's more than a major inconvenience, it's really lowered my standard of living and I can't take it anymore. I do not want to do this during next week and the week after since I have exams, and when I got home and realized they didn't do the final treatment and I could potentially have to live like this longer...I cried. And I am NOT a crier. I don't know what to do anymore and I can't really find much information on this...does anyone have any suggestions?

(Talking to my roommate doesn't work. He's very non-confrontational to the point of ALWAYS saying that we should just comply, though he doesn't do it anyway since his girlfriend does his share of the preparations (she also cooks him dinner every night and does all his cleaning...all of it). He's very laid back and blase about the inconvenience, basically just going to his girlfriend's house when we have to deal with this. And yes, I am moving out soon, but not until after exams).

Oh man GammaPhi88, that sucks! Here in Denver bed bugs are a real problem in some of the older buildings. It sounds like it's less your apartment and the building has an outbreak. Those things are so sneak and hard to get that they are having to go nuclear. You seem to be doing everything right, but things are just going wrong. The only upside is that you probably won't be taking them home.

Outside of dealing with it, which I can tell is NOT the best option, is there anyone you can stay with for the last few weeks? Is there any way to put everything into some type of storage or are you close enough to start taking a big chunk home and live out of a suitcase? I even wonder if you university might have a few empty dorm rooms that they might rent out for a reasonable weekly cost if they knew your situation. Do you go to a church that might be able to come up with a solution for you?

Sorry you're going through this. I know bedbugs are a nightmare and this is the worst time ever to deal with them.

I have and they always come up with an excuse for not spraying...like the lone shirt in the closet. No matter how well its cleaned, they insist that something small is really wrong and makes it completely impossible for them to treat. It seems really arbitrary because the second time they treated I didn't do the best job and they still sprayed.

It sounds like it one of those times where you just have to continue bugging them. As an acquaintance once told me "sometimes you have to be a squeaky wheel to get oiled."

Or since you are moving out after exams can they just spray after you move? I say F them and study. Your room is clean.

I'm going to continue bugging them, though our management is terrible. A few weeks ago a prospective tenant walked into my apartment...turns out they forgot I was living there and gave her a key to my place so she could check out a unit. My entire grades for law school are contingent on doing well on these exams, and I'm not letting this ruin it. If anyone will get it done, I will, since I've found my roommate is the passive agressive type (he's the guy who got his girlfriend keys to our apartment without telling me) and will just kind of sit back.

I just saw this. I concur with WCsweet<3, send an e-mail to the company (cc'ing your apartment management), stating that you have made the apartment available several times now, and that due to "personal hardship" during the upcoming weeks, your apartment will not be available for spraying until the <blank> date (i.e., two days after your finals are over). Also indicate in the e-mail that there are no signs of bedbugs in your apartment (my guess is that they are doing it building-wide).

Don't let this get you too down. Good luck with finals, too!

Two summers ago when the bedbug outbreak was pretty rampant, a friend's apartment got infested. They were coming in from the guy next door's unit. If your unit has them you will know it. You will find the outer shells (for lack of a better word) in your bed linens when you change the sheets. Bedbugs do not like the heat, my friend took all of her clothes and bed linens and put them in plastic bags. Then she was told to put them in the trunk of her car in the heat. The high temperatures kill them. If you want to run a quick test put the clothes in a bag in your trunk. After 24-48 hours in the trunk take the clothes out of the bags and if you don't find any dead bugs, then your items/unit are not infested. Sounds like the timing couldn't be any worse for you, good luck.

This too shall pass.

Focus on school. All of this crap with your complex is something you can deal with for the next 2 weeks. Suck it up and do what you have to do. You don't have time to deal with this sideshow. It's only a couple weeks. You can do anything for a couple weeks.

After your last file, review your local landlord tenant act and start doing what you need to do to get out of your lease.

Thanks everyone!

@IndianaSigKap thanks for the information...I found nothing when I changed my sheets and I knew we didn't have bedbugs. No shells, no bites, and I've shined my flashlight into crevices....nothing.

I've been focusing mostly on finals so this is secondary, but I did call the leasing office during a coffee break to ask exactly what was in the record that required this spraying. Guy at the front desk couldn't find anything at first. He said there was no record of us being required to get treatment, and then checked again and found they mixed us up with a unit in another building in our complex with similar numbers. Jerks.

@Kevin...my lease is actually up at the end of April, but my idiot roommate renewed for a year so his gf can move in. I'm subletting from him through finals, and then I'm out of here. Otherwise I would find a way to break my lease.

And other fun update: the maintenance guys dropped by for some reason even though we did not request maintenance and I told the leasing office to notify me if they needed to do anything. They left my toilet seat up and toilet unflushed, rifled through my stuff, and ate my Peeps I had in the kitchen. All my peeps. I'm going to focus on finals, but I will be dealing with this when they're done. There is a special place in hell for people who steal Peeps.

That just had to be quoted.

Bad, bad peeps stealers. BTW, have you ever put peeps on just baked brownies right out of the oven? Oooh, they get all melty and and make the brownies extra yummy. Ok, so the brownies do look a little mutated, especially if you use the blue peeps... or use blue, pink and yellow peeps on the same pan of brownies...

I don't know your financial situation, but could you outsource to another termination company and just get it done and have the report to give to your building management or whoever is ordering all this?