My husband currently works here on Fort Detrick. I am writing this complaint because I am not only appalled and angry, but unbelievably confused at the fact that Balfour Beatty is still a part of this installation. We moved here in Jan 09 from Fort Huachuca, Az. and have just put in our 30 day notice to vacate. We have had NOTHING but one horrible experience after another dealing with this ridiculously lazy and money driven company. Allow me to explain.

They are extremely lazy, unorganized and have no idea what is going on in the community. We called several times during the spring/summer months to have our outside water turned on. It finally was turned on in September! That's a whopping two weeks before they came to shut it off for the winter months. We were given every excuse known to man as to why the work had not been completed. The first was "Oh I don't see a work order in the system”, there all-time favorite to use was the generic "oh because of the water conservation we can’t turn your water on". There was also the famous "oh we have a lot of air conditioning units to fix, and will get back to you." 

Another issue we have is the quality of the housing. You hear everything. When I mean everything I mean I can hear my neighbors talking outside on their cell phones. I can hear my neighbors talking to each other. I feel the rumble of my neighbor’s garage door when it opens. The stairs and upstairs of our home creak when you walk. It makes it almost impossible to put my one year old down for a nap in his room when I know that as soon as I lay him down and try to walk away he will be awakened by the noise. The guest bathroom floor swells during the summer months making it difficult to shut the door. I see the beginning of a crack in the ceiling in the master bathroom. If I am in my son’s room I can hear my husband taking a shower in the master bath because the tub sounds as if you are going to fall through. The same goes for the guest bathroom tub.

The maintenance of their flower beds is un heard of. I did not ask for a flower bed that is community landscaping which should be handled by the management office. I was threatened that I would be fined if there were weeds in (I use this term loosely) "my" flower garden. At the time my son was barely 6 months old, my husband was recovering from knee surgery and was immobile, and i was expected to have the time to go and tend to a garden that wasn't mine to begin with.

The final thing that has really pushed me over the edge and forced me to write this formal complaint is reading the extensive list of things that have to be done prior to moving out. The first thing that caught my attention was that we are REQUIRED to pay $205.90 for professional steam cleaning of the carpet, and of course stain removal is extra. I am sorry I thought the purpose of military housing was to make the life of the soldier and their family easier, especially financially. We are also REQUIRED to either pay a 250.00 fee for cleaning unless we can do everything on their very detailed list. For example “Refrigerators must be free of all food, cleaned inside and out, defrosted and wiped dry. Food particles and mildew must be removed from rubber moldings around door. Refrigerators must be moved from the wall. Coils must be cleaned. Turn controls to low and leave refrigerator running. Remove drip pan from underneath Refrigerator and clean." That's just one of the 20 things that are part of their cleaning guidelines. That does not include the list of minimum cleaning requirements.  

The reason this is so surprising to me is that upon leaving Fort Huachuca we were only required to do a general cleaning. They took care of everything thing else. Our yards were fenced in. I never had a problem with maintenance being on time. The management team always had a solution not an on call list of excuses.

We decided to do the self-clean and after leaving the home in better condition than what we received it in were informed that we would still be charged $250 because a few light fixtures we could not reach were not clean enough, the tub was not cleaned to their expectations either. This is absurd because the tub was that way when we moved in. It was a dingy beige color and the caulking was coming undone. The kitchen cabinets had dead roaches in them and the garage was dusty. I have tried speaking to the community Manager Kim Mckeller about this matter and of course she chose to hide behind fair housing practices as her reasoning for not being able to resolve the problem.

&nbspIf we are responsible for all of this than what do we need a management company for? So basically they get our entire BAH every month to do nothing but take an extreme amount of time to fulfill service request and provide us with excuses when we have an issue. It is no wonder they have to start to rent to DOD employees, civilians, and even interns because there turnover is so high. The active duty military on this post deserve better. Before writing this letter I wanted to make sure that my complaints were valid. I did a Google search for Balfour Beatty community complaints. This is an example of one of the many hits Google Provided:.

http://www.rentalprotectionagency.com/case-20-0866-Balfour-Beatty-Communities-Michelle-Schukoske-Groton-Connecticut

I urge you to do a Google &nbspsearch as well and look at the amount of military families that are truly unhappy with their service and not only end their contract with Fort Detrick, but with the United States Military as well. We do such a great service for this country that we truly deserve better.

We used to be stationed in Groton, Ct. I loved it there! We never had any issues with Balfour Beatty. If something broke they came and fixed it right away. We got new orders in May and in June we moved to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. I was excited at first because housing was still managed by Balfour so I thought that I would have no issues once again. BOY WAS I WRONG! I hate it here. I was shocked when we moved in only to find that our yard is basically dirt and our landscaping was weeds, but I got over that. I knew it wasn't going to be as nice as our first place bc it had been brand new when we moved in, but it is just dirty. Our floor is actually brown around the edges from dirt...no matter how much I clean. And there is sooo much stuff that is broken and needs fixed, yet no one comes to fix anything. Our back porch light doesn't work....it never has. The light was also filled with bugs to the very top when we moved in, they came and supposedly cleaned it but it is still disgusting and filled with bugs. Our refrigerator at times decides that it will just stay warm for the day. Our cable doesn't work bc the line needs replaced, but the cable company can not replace it until Balfour approves it. Our toilets barely work...you need to hold the handle down for at least a minute or two just to get one sheet of toilet paper down. None of our outside spickets work for the hose so I can't even water the flowers I planted so it doesn't look like I'm living in the ghetto. Then to make matters worse I complained to Balfour and now she is writing us up. She wrote us up for having a screen that fell out of a second story window for no reason stored on our back porch. She said its not properly stored there. She also called to yell at me for allowing my soon to be 9 yr old son to play outside unsupervised, however, its right in our residents guide that children over six are allowed to play outside without supervision. I wrote her an email and stated that in the email and she was back at 10 am to write us up again. I don't know what to do. My yard is nice and tidy. We clean up after our dogs every day if not evey other day, but she wrote us up for having excessive dog waste. Yet my neighbors have so much dog waste in their back yard that I can't walk in my front door without wanting to throw up. And when I go to bed at night I smell dog poop in my room bc my window is open. I am fed up and don't know where else to turn.