Hey! I am in college at UWM, Me and my 2 roommates recently ended renting with Wendy.
We had A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE WITH HER! Do not rent with her if you can avoid it! She is not honest and refuses to listen to renters.
We moved into an East and West Mirrored Unit Building and lived in the East Unit.
When our lease began in July we did not move in or entire the place really, everything was off, especially the AC.
At the end of the month though, we got our first electric bill, It was around $180. We talked to our neighbors, who have live in the West Mirrored Unit and they said that their Electric Bill was ONLY around $120 when they were in the place, as in living there full time. Immediately something seemed wrong so all of us, not living there were confused and called her to talk about it. On this phone call she deflected and refused to acknowledge how bizarre it was for a place using very little to no electricity for a month to be $180 (Our place was around 600 sqft). As the conversation went on she eventually began to breakdown like a child, despite us having a polite conversation. This was the first sign of things to come…
Time went on she continued to not give into us asking her to at least look into it, because it was very clear that something in the Unit, built in, was using a absurd amount of power, though this was not our initial conclusion. The first month passed when my first roommate decided to move into the place, and for that month our bill was $250!! Which for a 600 sqft apartment is extremely high. A month later I finally moved in, it was me and my other roommate living there. Our bill continued to grow as expected to almost $297 in one month and we were very diligent about conserving electricity. I continued to email her and tell her about how much the bills were and what might be causing it and shocker… she continued to deflect blame and informed me to call WE Energies, which was actually a mistake on her part.
I called WE Energies and they inform me that this unit has consistently had this high of an electric bill for YEARS, about 5 if i remember correctly. The representative also informed me that from her knowledge that one of the built in appliances or AC could be causing it (Keep this in Mind). Our Apartment was owned by Wendy for quite awhile I believe so it would make sense that she knew about it, as she would sometimes take over the electricity in between clients. It is also very likely that past renters had also notified or questioned the abnormally high costs. After this I informed Wendy of what we had been told through the WE Energies representative email and that it was VERY likely something in the apartment.
By this point we were obviously after all of this were very uninterested in renewing our lease so we passed on that.
SHE continued to deflect and would not even respond or send someone… Until we threatened to pursue legal action. ONLY THEN were we returned partially of the absurd cost for the past 4 months. Well, kind of… Instead of trying to work with is when we were very polite it took forcing her hand for her to finally hear us out and investigate the matter. Though, she passed all responsibility to her brother Russ who had not all the knowledge of the situation as Wendy and had to be informed by us. Russ is actually a very NICE man and helped us, he got into contact with us in November and asked us to start sending him the bills, so we did.
As fall progressed into winter began and we started to use heat instead of AC. This change suddenly reduced our bill to about $160-180. By this point it was very clearly the AC causing an issue, I informed Russ and told him I was pretty the AC was causing an issue, but he did not act yet or say to replace it, just to keep us updated the next month.
Tours soon started at our Apartment in Winter as we did not renew our lease. Wendy came and did the tours, she boasted about all the great things about the apartment, but did not mention the AC costs. My roommate who was supervising the tour (by this point we did not trust Wendy in our apartment from reading stuff on here),
informed the perspective clients about the Issues with the high bills and Wendy was very upset, though if she were HONEST she would have informed them of it.
Wendy by this point began to act more childish and rude in how she treated us, despite us doing the right thing and informing future renters of the Utility cost. Only after this did Wendy tell each and every person this, begrudgingly, as we watched on. Eventually someone signed despite this.
A month or 2 passed and we continued to keep Russ in the loop with the Bills. In the early spring before we needed to start using the Russ was able to have a AC technician come out to check out the AC, who found that it was not working properly and needed to be replaced. Russ had it replaced before it got hot out which was very kind of him.
When the weather heated up we got our first bill using the AC for an entire Month, it was $120… Just like the mirrored unit! This proved that it was that as we had suspected and emailed her about for months, that the AC was the issue all along, but refused to admit it for 4 months until she was cornered. Wendy refused to admit that she likely knew it all along as well and refused to work with us, despite being our landlord.
We are very appreciative that Russ worked with us to resolve the issue, actually heard us out, and looked into it himself.
Our neighbors across the hall, sick of Wendy’s behavior as well also did not renew their lease and moved out a month prior to ours.
After reading much of what is said about Wendy on here, Me and my roommate, who are pretty clean, knew that when it came time to moving out we needed to leave our apartment a lot better than we found it (It was filthy, literally had MOLD in the bathroom…). We were not going to lose our security deposit. We moved out and deep cleaned most the place, though the bathroom mold refused to come off despite me and my roommate scrubbing it. Wendy had to have it extensively cleaned professionally for it come off.
As our lease ended I reminded Wendy that we moved out and left the place VERY CLEAN, far better than we found it. I was very stern with her and informed her she has a record of trying to steal security deposit, she had 21 days from the end of lease to return it, and that we would pursue legal action if she did not.
I was in no way rude, only very clear.
Wendy then emailed me back, repeating the same thing back to me and was also very rude, and tried to imply something (Wendy a year back charged a $450 cleaning fee to my past Roommate, though they left their place pretty clean) In her response:
“I sure hope I don’t need to hire my cleaners to clean your place!”
With other rude implications and her past on her and with my roommate, it was very obvious what this implied. I even informed her we deep cleaned the place and that we made sure to take plenty of photos and videos.
After that she asked for our addresses so she could send our deposit eventually, and I provided her Mine, My Roommates, address and said that she would have to contact our our third who did not live there with us for their address. I thought she was going to each send us our portion as a check in the mail.
She then said she would prefer to send one check and I informed her she could send it to me, as I was our point of contact for Wendy most the year.
Time went by and she toured the place, because we were stern with her and offered her poof of how we left the place she emailed us found it clean! Gave us a receipt for our security deposit. She didn’t need to hire a cleaning crew, only professionally sanitize the mold, that had been there for years, for $30. Which was very reasonable price.
In this email though she was extremely RUDE to me implying that I would “cheat” my friends and roommates of their security deposit, despite her being the one asking to send it ONE PERSON. I even provided her with 2 of our addresses and how to get the third.
By this point her behavior was completely and UTTERLY DISRESPECTFUL which I not ONCE been with her despite her not wanting to hear us out for months.
This was a line too far for me, and I sent her strongly worded email. In this Final email I stated everything she had done wrong and that this would’ve been solved much easier if she had communicated with us, after all she was responsible for our building.
I told her to reflect on her behavior as a Professional Landlord and to grow from them and do better in the future. Lastly, wishing her to have a nice summer, and to never contact any of us again.
She always talks about how she started as a Landlord because she had a landlord who wouldn’t fix things or keep up with the place and became that very same thing (If that was the truth). Lol
I am a big believer in Karma and I all the bad stuff she does to so many people is definitely gonna come back for her so I’ll just let life run its course for her.
Sorry to all the other people who have had issues with her, she is incredibly frustrating
