The War Rages On......

Now, you may have thought that the battle of the air conditioning was over two weeks ago when my new unit was finally installed. Alas, the war rages on......

Turns out that the reason the apartment was hot to begin with also had to do with the fact that the original air conditioning unit was not working. The apartment complex refused to believe us, despite numerous calls, and decided to install this new unit to make everything better. I can not complain entirely because at least now I can sleep at night (for the most part) because our bedroom stays very cool at whatever temperature we set it. However, the living room/dining room/kitchen area is still very warm. In fact, it is over 80 degrees nearly 24-7 despite trying to run the air at 75.

Saturday morning, we called yet again to have them come look at our old unit. In typical fashion, they told me they had put some extra freon in (they just did that about a month ago when we were having problems too which makes me think there's a leak or perhaps they are just telling lies), and that there was nothing else they could because the best the air conditioner could do is run 20 degrees below the outside temperature and since the outside temperatures have run in the 100+ degree area lately, then we should be happy that it is in the 80s inside. Hmm, that's funny because the new unit still manages to cool to 74/75 despite it being 100+ degrees outside. Oh, and I've lived here for nearly 8 years now and lived in many different apartments and not once have I had these problems with the air only cooling to 20 degrees below the outside temperature. After the maintenance man left with his pile of excuses, I decided I had had enough.

I took matters into my own hands and contacted the regional Vice President for Texas of the company that owns our apartment complex. I explained my frustration, the ongoing problems we had been facing since the beginning of May when it got warm, the excuses we were constantly given and yet nothing was done, and my anger at being forced to pay nearly $500 worth of electric bills in the past two months all because of their faulty equipment and still having my apartment sit at 80+ degrees. I received an e-mail back from the regional vice president of Dallas yesterday morning saying she was out of town until mid-week, but would be happy to contact me then to discuss this further. She or the regional VP of Texas must have also sent my e-mails to the apartment complex because we received a phone call from the maintenance supervisor at the apartment on Monday also saying that he had received my letter and that he wanted to work with us to fix the problem. Apparently you have to go to corporate to be taken even remotely seriously around here.

So today, our pets were forced to be put up yet again so they could come into our apartment and check things out. This time they are bringing a real air conditioning guy (the one that put our new unit in actually) with them to actually go up into the attic and check out the old unit and see what is going on. I'm sure they won't even tell us if there is something wrong with it because they won't want to spend the money to fix it and probably are just trying to bide more time and not get their butts chewed out by corporate later this week. That's the bad part about both of us having to work and not be able to be there and watch what they are doing and ask questions. I'm hoping though that since Ralph will be there (the air conditioning guy) and he is really nice and honest, they will call us this afternoon and tell us they are ordering x part or in the best world they are ordering us a new unit and hopefully by the end of the week, our whole apartment will be a decent temperature and our bill for next month will go down since our old unit won't be constantly running just trying to catch up to 75 even though it never will.

We've already started hibernating in our bedroom after dinner and turning the old unit up to 80 since that's about as cool as it gets regardless if it's 100 degrees or 85 outside. That way it won't run unnecessarily and still not cool and just waste our electric. So we shall see how the war continues......I'm tired of hiding out in the bunkers, I've made my move, now they need to hold up the white flag. We shall see! :)