Over the last few years working in property management software, I haven’t had the joy of getting called in the middle of the night with an “emergency” situation (which, 9 out of 10 times were never emergencies.) Although, I do get a chuckle when I get to hear my customers tell me their war-stories. When I was a site manager, I had a rule I would try to enforce that an emergency is “FIRE, FLOOD or BLOOD.” Anything that could wait until business hours, should. Nevertheless, I would get calls from frantic tenants and those who I felt were simply bored.
My favorite emergency phone calls were:
- I can hear my neighbor next door having sex
- Someone is in my parking space
- It is snowing outside and the road is slick, please fix that
- My garbage disposal isn’t working and I HAVE to use it
- There is a stray cat peeing on my front door
- I smell fingernail polish and I haven’t used any
- Someone is taking a bubble bath in the hottub
I use to fantasize about charging tenants for after-hours support for ludicrous stuff (like, what do you anticipate I do about the neighbors having sex right now?!?!) If I only would have had web-based property management software back then, that bored tenant could hop onto their tenant portal and shoot me a “work-order” (like, put a sign up “ATTENTION STRAY CAT: STOP PEEING.”)
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Janell is a member of Rentec Direct, a web-based property management software program designed to help streamline tenant criminal and credit checks and the day-to-day operations of landlords and property managers. You'll find many other useful articles like this on the Rentec Direct Blog.
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