9 Days, No Heat!

To give a little backstory, Jon and I have lived in our apartment for 4 years now. It’s a pretty good apartment in a good area and we pretty much love it… minus our building’s management company Greater Boston Properties. Avoid them at all costs, hell call them and tell them they blow… I would greatly appreciate the support.

In January 2003, we went away for a weekend to see The Producers on Broadway with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, it was fun. We came home 3 days later to discover that our apartment had been without heat since we left. It was 50 degrees inside our 3rd and 4th floor apartment and our poor kitties had been stuck in that cold the whole time. I was Tyra on “Top Model” screaming like I’d never yelled at a girl before. The pipes in the building froze, burst and left its inhabitants without heat and they’d done nothing to remedy the situation and there was no resolution in sight. We had to move into a hotel (that took kitties) for 4 days while they figured out the debacle. Ridiculous right? A hotel.

Boston’s Inspectional Services Department was called and placed on the case. We got heat, but no final resolution. Inspector Holmes (not kidding) was great and got us heat as soon as he could and we were able to withhold rent, time taken off, and be reimbursed for our hotel time. It was great! He’s was our friend and we came to think of him fondly.

Every year that we’ve lived there, we’ve also had major heating issues with our 4th floor (which is where our bedroom is and where the office is – we tend to be up there a lot). Each season when the building’s heat comes on, the upstairs refuses to cooperate until they come and blow the lines and then they have to come repeatedly about once a month until Spring because the system just refuses to stay going. The second year we had the issue they discovered a problem with a sensor or a part within our actual baseboards (hot water) and they’d need to replace the part. Noone did.

Year 3, same issue, same number of times, same amount of time spent blowing lines every other week… no replacement part (requested by us numerous times to no avail), no solution.

That brings us to this season’s growing timeline of disgust.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER:
- Called GBP to let the new girl handling our building know about our previous heating issues and basically to scare her into not fucking with us this season; She seemed receptive as I began my pre-emptive, pre-season heating battle in plenty of time to get us heat for the upcoming winter months. The response was: “We’ll start working on it.”


OCTOBER:
- We contacted the owner/director/whatever to find out the resolution. We’re looking into it and I’m well aware of the problems faced in previous years… don’t worry.

- Building heat is turned on and we realize there is no heat to our upstairs (not surprisingly).

- Contact GBP and again reminded them of the previous 3 winters.

- No response, no visit, no nothing for a couple weeks.


NOVEMBER:
- Getting colder, still noones been out to look at or solve our heating issue. Contact GBP again, “We’re still looking at possibilities…”

- No response, no visit, no nothing… again…

- After multiple calls, we finally got someone to come out and blow my, er... the heating lines. Heat! Yet we know this is a temporary solution as in the past 3 years this hasn’t worked for more than a couple weeks at a time.

- Week before Thanksgiving, the upstairs heat stops again. No time to deal, we’re going away and to be frank, its not that cold up there yet.

DECEMBER:
- Called first thing about upstairs heat. No response.

- Woke up on December 6th to no heat upstairs and (wait for it) now downstairs is like an icebox as well. We’re without heat on both floors folks! Amazing isn’t it!

- Called at like 6:30am. No response.

- Called when I got to work… “The whole building is having an issue.” I ask to be called back shortly with an update. No response.

- Called again. Different person, different reasoning “Someone left the basement door open so that caused the system to fail. Someone is out there now.”

- Called again before I left that day because Jon told me that when he left at 6:45 that morning, all basement doors were shut. They lied again.

- I got home that night and there was miraculously heat on both floors!

- About 8pm that night, the downstairs heat stops. Upstairs is somehow still going strong.

- Call and leave message so that in the morning they can get right on it.

- Morning (Wednesday), no heat upstairs either!

- Leave another message. No response still.

- Hunt them down to get this response: “Apparently your unit was the only one having any trouble yesterday. Maybe by the end of the day we’ll know what’s going on.” Which pissed me off because yesterday the whole building was supposedly having issues.

- Called for update, noone could give me one and our buildings agent was not available. Left 2 messages.

- 4 hours later, still no call back. Still no heat. Still no resolution. Still fuming! Call back again and leave a rather scathing message noting how 4 hours is an unacceptable time to wait for a call back.

- Receive call within seconds (literally). No resolution. She will make sure someone’s still working on it. I got busy, 5pm came and went. No heat. No call back. No one came out. No nothing. Can’t reach them as its after business hours. 2 days without heat.

- Thursday morning call again. No response.

- Called again later in the day and got our “agent” who told me someone was on their way over there right now to resolve the issue “upstairs”. Um, UP AND DOWN RETARD! “Oh, didn’t realize. I’ll have to make sure the workers know that.” was the only response. Fucking brilliant!

- I got home at 5:30 and lo and behold someone was there! Jon was upstairs with him. The guy left and I assumed all was well in heatland. Jon informs me that the plumber/heating person did everything he knew how to and still no heat on either floor. He had to go out to Charlestown to get us space heaters (3 days late) and would be back later. Damn straight as these last 3 days have been the coldest so far this season in Boston.

- 7pm – no heaters.

- 8pm – no heaters

- 9pm – no heaters

- 10pm – no heaters

- 11pm – no heaters

- 11:45pm and I’m going to bed, are you serious!

- Friday morning I decide that I’m not even calling them. I want them to contact me for a change and give me an update.

- Jon wrote a letter to the head of our management company outlining the problem and the lack of response and willingness to come to a speedy resolution. He personally dropped it off on his way into work.

- NO RESPONSE!

- Blizzard hits.

- Work closes early and I trudge home to find 2 space heaters upstairs.

- Jon gets home after I leave to work at the theatre and discovers that only 1 heater actually works. Amazing.

- Saturday – no response, no visit, no nothing but cold.

- Sunday – no response, no visit, no nothing but cold.

- Monday – no response, no visit, no nothing but cold.

- Tuesday – no response, no visit, no nothing but cold and I am NOT CALLING THEM because this just gives us more ammo and backing with Inspectional Services.

- Tuesday night, its only 17 degrees outside. Damn cold and the apartment is starting to feel it.

- Wednesday morning. Cold in there. Jon called and left another message this morning and now we’re leaving it to the hands of Inspectional Services!

*Keep you posted on our non-progress!
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UPDATE (12/15 10:40am):
Jon just called GBP and talked to that twunt Becky who apparently got pissy when Jon told them that they're not replacing it until we can sit down and amend the lease to reflect a decrease in rent during the winter months because its in our lease that heat and hot water are included. SHE GOT PISSED: "Oh really" was her comment. Um, yeah... really! What a DB.


UPDATE (12/15 9:15am):
Last night the City of Boston was in our apartment checking out the heating situation. AT the time, he clocked the temperature in our apartment at 54 degrees. Cold much? Inspector Miller was great, cynical about the management company and determined to just fix it. He left them messages and awaited a call back while in our apartment. No response, so he left and said in the morning they would be officially served with legal documents and from the time they are served they have 24 hours to remedy the situation or its court time and major fines!

So, I'm getting ready for work this morning and there's a knock at the door. It's the electrician from GBP. He was there to look at our circuit board to see if its possible to put in electric baseboard heating throughout the apartment. Just fix it.


UPDATE (12/14 4:15pm):
The management company's official stance today is: "We're trying to replace the system so until then..." You're kidding me right? It's 20 degrees out in the sun and tonight is supposed to be in the single digits again but don't worry about it. I'm sure whenever you get around to getting a new system will be fine. Mind you, they've been trying to get a new system for 4 years. My new name is Nanook!