Apartment Review for Raven Place - Richmond, VA

When I was looking for an apartment downtown, some brand new ones opened up called Raven Place. I thought it would be great to be the first one to live in one of the apartments, but it has been nothing but a headache. These 'luxury' apartments are a joke, and i'm just going to go down the points they list on their website. - Underground Parking: for $50 a month you can try and squeeze your car into the concrete maze they call parking, the first few months they had no assigned parking and oversold the spaces so you couldn't even park there half the time. One person had their car broken into and they tried to break into my roommate's as well, so much for safety. There's also a constant concrete dust falling in there as well, my car always has a lovely grey film covering it every morning. - Gym on site: 2 treadmills, 2 ellipticals, 1 multi-function home-gym thing, I guess that qualifies as a gym. - Free Direct TV (47 Channels): total joke, rather watch free OTA HDTV. - Free Internet access: Wireless, didn't have coverage in my apartment for a month after I moved in, I guess, good for web surfing? I got my own DSL line anyway. - Free washer/dryer in apartment: The tiny High Efficiency type washer, dryer blows out into your apartment, saves from having to turn on the heat sometimes... -24 hour free maintenance service: Where? We had a fire alarm go off for 4-5 hours because nobody could contact them. -Limited access with key pad for security: Helps if they give you the code for the keypad when you move in. - Monitored security alarms in each apartment: I see mine, but was never shown how to use it or how it works. -Huge apartments for area: I'm not sure who designed my apartment, but it's terrible, it definately has a high ceiling, but it's pretty cramped. There's also a similar ceiling dust falling like it does in the basement, everything I own is covered in a white coating the next day after I dust it. High ceilings also result in thin floors, I constantly heard the dog in the apartment above me barking. When we moved in we had no access to the wireless internet, the TV lines weren't hooked up, and the phone lines weren't connected in multiple places. The first week we were there we had a splendid water leak from the apartment above us because when their washer was installed nobody checked the seals on the water hoses. The elevator would also constantly get stuck in the basement, and wasn't fixed until 2 months later, kudos for managing to do something right. When I was trying to set up my DSL service the Verizon tech found that the cables in my apartment weren't connected to the line going to the basement, once we fixed that we found the line going to the basement stopped about 10 ft. short of the box, i'm glad I don't use a landline phone, or i'd have been out of luck in an emergency during that first month. Lately there have been mysterious odors smelling strongly of sewage, air fresheners only help so much, and the windows are sealed so fresh air is out of the question. As time has gone on apartments in the area have started dropping prices, and now the apartment above me which originally would have cost more is now $300 per month less than what i'm paying, i've got to applaud Genesis Properties for their terrible communication and service. You'd have to pull off a miracle for me to rent from you again.