Interesting Stuff

I’ve lived in this apartment for 2.5 weeks. This entire time, my stove has not worked (I’ve been making a lot of soups and other microwavable stuff). The gas seems to be flowing to it, but the pilot lights are out. I’ve tried to relight them. The building manager also tried to relight them, and then called the apartment management company to get a repairperson out here. They said someone would fix this on Friday, August 18. That didn’t happen, but I then went up to Mountain View for a week so I couldn’t follow up more quickly. In the meantime, my building manager claims to have called the main office at least 5 times and personally visited the people in charge of repairs, trying to get my stove repaired (and apparently to get something like this fixed in another tenant’s apartment). This morning, I went to the main office to ask about this, and was told that it would be fixed by this evening. Well, it’s still not fixed. This evening, I read California Civil Code Section 1941.1 and a couple related sections, and it looks like I could take the Roberts Management Companies to small claims court if this goes on much longer. I don’t want to bother with that, but it’s something I’m beginning to look in to.

This apartment has a fantastic location, it’s huge, and except for the stove everything is very well kept up: when I moved in, it had new paint (required by law) and brand new carpet. The entire building is now in the process of being re-stuccoed and the main gate and intercom system are being upgraded. It is wonderful, except that for the life of me I can’t seem to get a working stove. How frustrating! I’d gladly trade the new stucco, intercom, and carpet for a working pilot light.