

Ask HN: How do you submit maintenance requests as a tenant? - aml183

We are building a software for property managers to help them manage maintenance requests. Wanted to know more about what tenants think.
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Slix
There's a horrible web form on my property management's website. My landlord
is awesome, but this part of the process is pretty bad. I'm a student living
in a mostly-student apartment place.

After submitting my address, unit number, name, email, and a description of
the problem (sidenote: I always have to figure out which way is north and try
to describe the bedroom/bathroom with the problem), it tells me "thanks for
your feedback".

From what I can tell, the office people completely reword my query (taking out
all of the relevant detail like what we've already tried to fix the problem or
how the tub _is_ clogged but it takes a while to see). Then they assign it to
some maintenance person in their ticketing system. And eventually they come
out and fix the issue. Then they leave a printout of the ticket with some
scribbled notes (which I assume is legally required).

I'd love to know the status of my maintenance request, especially if I have to
or want to be home for it. An email would probably be nice. And informing my
roommates on submission (so they know I did) and/or further notifications
would be neat too, since I end up having to tell them manually.

~~~
aml183
Can you email me at me@arilewis.com? We are trying to develop a solution to
this problem.

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panorama
We email a single person in what's probably a ~40-unit apartment in SF who
then dispatches the maintenance team the next day. That person is probably in
charge of the maintenance team's scheduling.

For us, it's a pretty painless, straightforward process. Not entirely sure how
it is on the other side though.

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dalerus
Email to the landlord, they send a maintenance person to fix the problem.

When we had a property management company, worked the same way, but they
usually had someone out quicker.

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adam419
I use something that does this powered by AppFolio.

I just create a maintenance request through it when needed and can track it
online and the property manager get's notified about it.

