Scholar Birmingham

This place is like a living HELL. I know it looks fancy and nice, all furnished and with great location. Sounds like a perfect place to stay close to campus. But don’t get FOOLED by the appearance. Don’t listen to the leasing office. They’re just selling you a LIE. I’ve been living here less than one year. It already happened twice that the TRASH chute is STUCK. Not to mention there are too many times that the trash room is piled with trash that you can’t even possibly open the door of trash room so that the only choice you have is to leave the trash in the hallway. The SMELL is not even the worst. The worst is countless fruit FLIES and gigantic ROACHES. I’ve been talking to the front desk for over TWO MONTHS. All I got from their response is they’re working on it but two months passed, NOTHINGS CHANGED. They promised sending a pest control in my apartment but no one actually shows up. So I put vinegar traps in the hallway. They got FULL OF FRUIT FLIES less than A DAY. If you want to live in a clean environment, don’t ever sign the lease. No body will take care of your complaints. Miscommunication and lack of efficiency is what I encounter in this apartment. If you want to live with AN ARMY OF FLIES, then this is the perfect place for you.

In Mar 2021, my daughter signed an Aug 2021 online lease, about the same time as her roommate. After she electronically signed it, the company raised the rent about $10 on my daughter's lease, but didn't raise the roommate's rate. Because the lease is online, the company has the ability to make real-time changes to the terms even after it is electronically signed. Your signature is still on the lease even though terms have been changed without your consent. When we called that evening to fix the problem, we were told the company uses tiered pricing & there were only a certain number of beds available at the quoted price. Even though both roommates would live in the exact same apartment, my daughter had signed up "too late" to receive the quoted pricing. Her roommate signed minutes earlier & supposedly secured the last available bed at the quoted price. I told Ascend the price increase after the signing of the lease was not acceptable. Per the manager, the increased pricing could not be reversed (policy). I requested to cancel. They said they would cancel the lease, but if we changed our minds and wanted back in, the pricing might be even higher. Minutes later, I clicked on the online lease & they had indeed raised the price again by another $10, I guess thinking that we wouldn't be able to find a replacement. When I mentioned they would also be losing the roommate's lease, I was told management would most likely contact me. But no one reached out the following day. I was surprised Ascend did not reverse the increased rent when we said we would cancel. They ended up losing my daughter's lease & the roommate's lease. Two days after cancelling, someone from Ascend called & said they had been granted a one-time exception from upper management to offer the originally quoted rent. Had we thought they were pursuing this solution we might have waited to see how it turned out, but with our previous communication from them threatening to raise my daughter's rent even more (which they did on the online lease minutes later), we signed elsewhere. JMO, the complex uses tiered pricing to coerce students into hurrying to sign leases as early as possible, (hoping they may be forced to cancel if their circumstances change) so they can collect an 85% re-let fee. Other issue: parking spaces were full & my daughter would have had to rent a $70/mo. space in a public parking garage down the street; unsafe situation.

I really like all the amenities this place offers and the safety features they have. However, the parking costs is a joke. The cheapest option is $50 and it’s a surface lot across the street. I toured the place twice and the first time the guy showing my mom and I around took his mask off and when asked to put it on he didn’t even do it correctly. Both tours residents were walking around or uses amenities without a mask or keeping distance. Nor do any of their social media posts follow CDC guidelines about distancing or mask wearing (except recent posts). My third problem with this place is cancelations. I signed in October (almost a year before my contract would start) and called to cancel it because I will no longer be in the area. They wouldn’t allow that, even though move in is 7 months away and I’m not a current resident. I was not told about the 72 hour policy until today when I tried to cancel. It was not in a form a signed before I submitted my application, only in the contract given after you sign you contract. When touring the second time I asked about cancelation and was told that it’s allowed before I make a payment or receive keys.