1/5.0

07/09/2021

Former Resident

*To be clear, I’m just a visiting friend of a current resident but was abused by management!* Besides being infested with pests, it's also infested with drug addicts, thieves, and a lying, abusive, law-breaking management. First experience with the maintenance guy, Price, Who didn't even introduce himself, was him screaming at me! Then he tried to serve me with a no trespassing, while visiting my friend, for NO LEGIT REASON! I even confirmed with the owner, Cindy, as long as the tenant gives you permission to be there, you have the right to be there! They are illegally 86'ing people without any reason! He is a scary, violent man! Wendy, the "manager", is a lying narcissist b*tch! My friend who lives there was letting me store some belongings for a week while I was supposed to leave island. Never made my flight because Wendy & Price started yelling at me as I'm carrying things to my friends. She is a rude horrible person! I can't believe they are actually in charge of this place, they are completely unprofessional and not doing it legally! They both should be arrested for going against tenant rights! ...

1.1/5.0

04/29/2021

Former Resident

**CAUTION ** Do anything you can to STAY AWAY from University Palms. Apartments do not feel safe. There are many domestic abuse fights and threats heard every night. The property manager tried to move myself and my roommates out of our (3br) apartment (2 months into our lease) into a smaller apartment so they could rent out our apartment to a larger family. When we respectfully declined they threatened to evict us (over false noise complaints) if we didn't comply. When we said okay since we had no other option, it turned out they no longer needed our apartment since the other family backed out and suddenly they no longer needed to "evict" us and never mentioned any noise complaints again. Finally when we moved out after our lease and cleaned the place up, we never got our $2,000 deposit back. We had to take the owners to court twice, pay over $300 in legal fees and wait over a year to finally get our deposit back. The property manager is psychotic, the owners are flat out crooks, and the apartments themselves are infested with cockroaches. Do what ever you can to stay far far away from University Palms. ...

1.7/5.0

03/28/2013

The complex is severely run down and the owner’s certainly do not know what it means to be a landlord. Most of the apartments have broken furniture, if it’s not half missing, the rooms are dirty, and they allow non-students to live there. They also ask students to move into other apartments throughout their lease periods, enter apartment’s without notice or welcome and break the lease with several of their own policy’s (nonstudent renters, pets, ect.) . The rent is higher than most places around and is not worth even half of what you pay for it. I rented from fall '09 through spring 10. ...

1.8/5.0

11/09/2012

This place is absolutely horrible. All of the previous comments are spot on. In was told I was only going to have 2 roommates and ended up with 5. I refuse to walk around the apartment without shoes on because all of the floors are filthy. The refrigerator was absolutely disgusting when we first moved in and we had to fully scrub it down to get all of the mold out of it. Our toilet has been leaking all semester and when we tell Cindy, she promises to get it fixed ASAP but then never follows through. People are constantly blaring their music at all hours of the day. This place is ridiculously overpriced considering you can rent a house for half as much that is twice as nice as the Palms. The list goes on and on of how horrible things are at these apartments. I am definitely not coming back next semester and quite frankly, would rather live on the streets than in this dump. Do not move in here! I highly suggest renting a house, living in Ikena or ASH. Anything but the Palms! I rented from winter 11 through fall 11. ...

1.2/5.0

05/01/2012

The internet hardly ever works, and you cannot access most school resources while connected to it (jstor, star portal, all research databases you get directed to from the library, etc.). If you call up Cindy and manage to get a hold of her to talk to her about any of your complaints, she will avoid the issue. If you complain about the internet, she'll tell you that "it doesn't work when it rains and that's just how technology is" and tell you to walk to campus. Hot water randomly goes out, managers are never around to fix anything. rats in the mattresses, windows in certain apartments have been broken all year and have yet to be fixed. you will save hundreds of dollars and avoid a ton of stress if you don't rent from this place, trust me. ...

1.5/5.0

10/02/2011

Alright I haven't lived in this for awhile but I highly doubt that it has changed. First out, I was guaranteed a "single-room" when I spoke to the manager at the time, however at my arrival I was unpleasantly surprised to find my single room is actually a double room set up with just me in it. So I find myself with two lofted beds in an absolutely atrocious set up. I put down my deposit and half of the rent due with the intention to give the remaining in March according to what I and the manager agreed upon. I move in and completely have to scrub down the entire apartment, well I mean if you are okay with having the bottoms of your feet constantly black then there's no need to clean. The kitchen was disgusting and only two of our gas burners actually worked (about half the time anyway), the other two would just make clicking noises attempting to turn on. The bathroom was disgusting with a ring of mold in toilet and let's just say that Drano was constantly on my shopping list no matter what I did. Clorox was my best friend during the time period, let me just say! Everything in that apartment got clorox sprayed on it and I still wasn't convinced it would ever be clean. Now on to my room, I found remnants of the previously tenants in several spots. The carpet was disgusting, with black and brown stains everywhere. The screens were falling off, and well the internet. What internet? I did not have internet from the moment I walked in that door, and when I complained out it I was told that it must be my computers fault that it can't connect to nonexistent internet since I nor my roommate and our neighbors ever had said internet. Back to my payment of my deposit and half the rent, during my spring break none the less I receive a call from a very unpleasant Cindy Madden stating that if I did not pay her the full amount of about $3,000 I would need to vacate the premises immediately. When I told her that I had paid part of the rent as well as a deposit she proceeded to tell me that she had absolutely no record of it. But when I stated that I was able to provide a receipt from her previous manager that I had indeed paid she retracted her previous statement and said okay just pay the remaining balance. She is an absolutely horrible landlord. So the following semester, like a fool I decide to move back in because I did not get a dorm room. When I check in, I'm being told that I will be in a double room with a roommate, despite the fact that I paid the "single-room" fee last semester. Let's just say I finally learned my lesson and was able to find an awesome 1-bedroom apartment at the Waiakea Lagoon View Apartments. Those are definitely a little bit more expensive as well as slightly farther from UHH by nothing I think that is unreasonable. The apartments are clean, the office people nice and the general noise level is at a minimum. So just a friendly word of advice, do not and I repeat DO NOT ever live at the University Palms in Hilo. I rented from spring '08 through fall '08. ...

1.5/5.0

07/08/2011

University Palms is exactly what it looks like. Internet sucks and so does the washers but the residents keep breaking them because they don't know how to wash a frickin load of clothes. Sand does not magically dissapear if you put it in the washer IDIOTS!!!. Before sending your kids to college please teach them how to wash, and respect others....You get what you put into it, try find another place thats cheaper thats right you get what you pay for..... ...

1.2/5.0

09/30/2010

University Palms Review: The University Palms is the absolute worst place you can live in all of Hilo, possibly all of Hawai’i! I have rented in a few spots, and these are the worst managers I have ever met, if you could call it meet. Cindy Madden appears to be nice (dont let that fool you), her husband is an absolute jerk off. His way of introducing himself to people is "Hi, I dont know you, I need your money" or” Hi, you need to pay me." Since I dont know his name I will refer to him from now on as Richard. Dick is the cheapest landlord I have ever had. The University Palms is so rundown, and things have not been replaced here in years. We have a refrigerator that is rusty, moldy smelling beds, carpets that are worn and brown, shower heads from the 1970's, broken coffee tables, old stoves, broken couches, broken furniture, couches with holes and tears, termite infested cabinets.... there are much more problems, but this is all I can see from where I am sitting. That is only the start of the list of the terrible things that go on in the University Palms! The reason I cant name off more things is because the wireless internet is non existent. We are now a month into school, and the Maddens have not fixed anything. I only have internet directly inside my front door, and I am one of the lucky ones. Dont ever think you will get internet in your bedroom or at your desk. We have emailed and called numerous complaints, and have yet to receive one response in the past month. The best we've gotten is it will be fixed in two days; thirty days have passed so far without a resolution in sight. Even though internet is guaranteed in the contract, and Im sure every student needs it, this is way down of the University Palms priority list (the 1st thing on their list is stealing your money followed lying to you). Next, every picture or floor plan you have seen on the internet is false. There are no single or double apartments. It is either four shared rooms, or eight. All the floor plans are double what you see. Each room for 2 people does have its own key, but many of these keys work in other doors, further proof of how shady this place is. When I first moved in, the resident manager brought a box of keys and just tried one after the other for 30 minutes. This should have been a sign for me to run. Another sign for me to run should have been the state of the rooms when I first walked in. The fridge was rusty, the door locks loose, and everything was sticky. There is absolutely no chance this place was ever cleaned before I came here. The floor was a sticky mess, the kitchen had ants, and there was food on the floor. The bathroom is a whole other story; the shower was covered in black mold and dirt, the toilets had pubes in it, and there was left over soap from the previous tenant (probably because he left in such a hurry!). The shower head was so moldy water would not flow through it. Another girl has mold so bad it clogs the sink! And let me remind you, this is all before we moved in. What’s more atrocious is the rumor that they are not going to refund our security deposit so they can charge us a cleaning fee when we leave! At one point Dick walked into my room uninvited to tell me to stop cleaning because “this place just gets dirty, and that I was wasting my time.” More proof Dick Madden is a thief. This is the most unsanitary place I have moved into, and I plan on raising hell if they don’t refund me every penny of my security deposit. That brings me to the kitchen. Besides the fact that there were ants and food lying everywhere, there was chewed up wood under the sink that I can only assume are some type of termite. My refrigerator has stopped working as of this morning, causing all my food to go bad, over $50 in losses. Asking around I have found out that numerous refrigerators cannot operate at the right temperature, and a few more that are completely broken like mine. The stove is a firebomb waiting to happen. One burner does not turn on at all; the other one lets out a flame three inches high, coming out five inches from the center of the stove. It’s only luck that I have not burned myself. My roommate and myself have both sent emails, along with two phone calls telling Dick the dangerous situation; it has been two weeks without a reply. I really hope this place goes up in flames! (I have since noticed that there are no batteries in the fire alarms, this must be illegal and dangerous considering the students that live here.) The bedrooms are another ridiculous situation. The carpets have never been replaced, and have the smell to prove it. The beds feel disgusting, and the walls have mold, dirt, or a mystery yellow substance on every bedroom wall I have seen here. There are cockroaches in nearly every drawer I have opened. The only one that didn’t have a cockroach had a pair of woman’s panties. I honestly cant make this bullshit up, and I have the pictures to prove it. Many of the windows have handles that are broken or missing, and cannot be closed. Every other light fixture is missing a light bulb. The desks are filthy and wobbly. This section needs a paragraph all its own, and it has to deal with the rat the girls have in their room. It has been 3 weeks since it was first spotted, and there have been no good measures to deal with it. I feel I am one of the lucky ones in that I only have rat shit on one of the beds in the apartment, not the actual rat. The laundry room is another source of anguish. The first weeks that I was here, the washing machines were out of service. Online it states there are laundry rooms on both the first and third floors; never have I seen a laundry room on the first floor. There are three washing machines on the third floor, two of which are broken. We were told all three were fixed, only to find one break as soon as the first person put money in it, and that they lied about the second one being fixed at all. I shouldn’t need to say at this point that the room is filthy, and there are dirty puddles on the ground. That first part of the University Palms Review has only to do with the initial conditions at move in, worse have been developing. After asking a few students, the payment plan gets more and more sketch. When you see the price online (which is way way too high for this shanty town), you would think that it is divided into equal payment each month. Half the students paid in full before move in, the other half had 3 payments due in August, Sept and October, in the amount of $781.25, and we do not pay in the months of November or December, Dick of course made us write all three checks on the spot, and had them dated for the correct months. Never had I heard of such a payment plan. One girl and her parents raised enough hell that she does a month to month plan. This place is constantly noisy. The resident managers do nothing if your music is blasting during the middle of the day. The reaction by others is to simply turn their music up louder. Others are forced to study elsewhere on campus (which makes sense since there is no internet here anyways). On a Tuesday at 10pm, I can hear the music from 3 doors away echoing in my room, on weekends the music and bass is blasting 10 times louder. Another MAJOR problem is the owners and managers enter our rooms without advanced notice. I have also seen them enter a room numerous times without even knocking. They simply take out their keys, open the door, and walk right in. I have no idea why they entered; neither do the tenants of these rooms; it is doubtful the student actually knows of their entry. No explanation or advanced notice was ever given, and no it was not an emergency. The owner, Dick, has also walked straight into my room, and started painting the walls; no notice, no knock; next thing I know I am breathing in paint fumes. This intrusion has become a major problem because there have recently been thefts of large amounts of money, behind previously locked doors. The list goes on and on, from horrible living conditions to questionable business practices. Nowhere on their website is the address of University Palms given, nor is an address given on where to mail any deposits, payments, or complaints. I rented from fall 10 through spring 11. ...

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1377 Kapiolani St, hilo, HI 96720

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