The Carter Group

Aandrea Carter is the biggest b**** in the city. She doesn’t know how to fix anything and runs out of money all the time. Her properties are a mess. Don’t rent from her.

Andrea Carter is one of the most dishonest businesspersons in Kansas City. Don’t rent from them. They are such a joke! Look at their office– I wish I had listened to my instincts with these people. Please take heed!

If I could give The Carter Group 0 stars I would, but that is not an option on Unilocal.I’m going to start with the 3 positives — It is cheap living for the plaza, you can bring animals and the new maintenance man-​Falsto-​is amazing. He deserves to work somewhere much better than this company. However, those 3 positives do not even begin to make up for the hell hole you will walk into if you rent there.
Let’s start from the beginning when they rented me an apartment that used to rented to a prostitute or drug dealer so they could get a tax break. My first day there the girl tried to break in, my second day there two people came asking for drugs, and at the end of my first month there someone vandalized my door. When I called concerned, Christina, who I do not believe works there anymore was anything but helpful. She would repeat the same things over and over. She would say the building was secure and that she would try to help me out. The buildings are NOT secure. A lot of the times the front/​back doors are broken and do not lock when you leave. Not to mention I had to listen to the tenant above me have sex and do some really weird things at the worst hours of the night. He would vacuum at midnight, his aggressive dogs would run around at 3 am, blare music, try to play guitar, and he would be getting his freak on ALL the time. (although that never lasted more than a few minutes) I begged them to move me to a new apartment but that was work within itself. Christina would never call back when she said she would. George would tell me all the wrong information (don’t even try to get utilities started. You can’t because they have NO idea what they are talking about). After basically calling Christina everyday she eventually got around to getting me into a new apartment that was on the top level. I thought my luck might change but shame on me for thinking so.
The new apartment they rented to me had been abandoned due to bedbugs. However, even though Christina, Joel, and crew knew this they still rented it out to us. It was the dead of winter so the bedbugs didn’t start showing up till March. When my boyfriend and I found bedbugs crawling out of the floorboards I immediately called Joel to get it sorted out. He had the audacity to say that Falsto could come up and «spray around the problem.» If you know ANYTHING about bedbugs that will not work and trust me when I say Joel knew about this issue the whole time. My boyfriend and I had to endure 2 months of this before they even hired someone to come spray. Of course, we doubted the guy they hired but Joel refused to give us his info and credentials. No wonder the bedbugs never fully went away. When I tried to report them to BBB we found out that they don’t belong so there was nothing we could do.
There were several other examples of how horrible this place was. Our ceiling and walls fell apart bc of the extensive water damage that they just kept patching up. Everything done there is a band-​aid never a real fix. There were bugs EVERYWHERE even though we kept the place extremely clean. The were notices on the doors of the buildings saying the company wasn’t paying the gas bill and that it would be turned off soon. There was also the problem of them saying they did routine bug spraying when that was factual untrue. They didn’t begin doing this until we complained and complained but would write these notices like they ALWAYS did these sprays. They would give a day or so notice that your pets needed to be evacuated for the spraying in the middle of the workday. And of course you couldn’t opt out.
We knew we had to move out. So we decided to rent month to month. I called Joel and had a five minute conversation about switching our lease. He informed me that rent would go up 50 dollars and we were fine with that as long as we could get out as soon as we found a new place. While on the phone Joel told me he was writing all this down but it was obvious he didn’t later when we called to move out. When my boyfriend called not only did they tell us they had no notes that we wanted a month to month lease, they also had not problem with stealing our extra 50.00 dollars that we had been paying. The new female employee acted as if she had no idea we paid and actually made a denial that we did. My boyfriend had to threatened to bring his bank statement to her to show her she was stealing money from us. I don’t think she was doing it on purpose but it shows how incompetent these people are. Oh, and not to mention she had resigned our lease without our permission. And had the wrong lease month — basically said we moved in October when we signed a new lease in January when we switched places. We paid double rent in Feb but when we went back to clean the place they had already done it even though we were still tenants. I thought about fighting them on it but it wasn’t worth dealing with these incompetent people. Plus they won’t ask for a forwarding address. BEWARE! DO NOT RENT!

I rented from The Carter Group for a year and a half, because I wanted to live in an affordable place on the Plaza and it offered a month-​to-​month lease with a cheap pet deposit policy. Pretty good deal. right? Well… my apartment was very cute & spacious and I am glad I lived in it, however I wish it would’ve been managed by a different company all together.
For the first year I lived there, the maintenence man (even though they claimed he lived «on site») was always unreachable when I would call him. And if I left messages all weekend on the machine of the management group, I never got a response. There was no way to get service for emergencies outside of M-​F 10 – 5. I once had a broken furnace issue in September, where it blasted full power for 3 days, creating a sweltering sauna in my apartment for those 3 days. Seriously, you should be able to get a hold of your management and have them respond to emergency maintenence problems right away, not after 36 hours.
My electricity also went out more times than I could count, and 90% of those times it was localized to my apartment so it was obviously a wiring problem. Still, they kept putting «bandaids» on the problem so that it kept going out, and of course when it did go out, it was like pulling teeth to get someone over to fix it. I can’t tell you how much spoiled food I had to throw out because the fridge lost power for days. Now, for the last couple months I lived there, they got a new maintenence guy who was much better. Thank god. I only wish I would’ve had him for the whole time I was there…
And finally, the event that triggered my writing this review. I left in January during a whirlwind-​crazy-​busy-​week, but spent an entire evening cleaning the apartment top to bottom (even the melted ice cream from the freezer that melted because they wouldn’t fix the electricity!!!) so that I’d ensure I’d get my security deposit back. That apartment looked good. When I hadn’t gotten my security deposit back a month later, I called, called, and called again to see where it was. Each time they said «Oh I’m sorry, what is your forwarding address, we’ll get that to you.» I spoke to different people at the company half a dozen times – always the same response. Finally, I turned the case over to the Better Business Bureau of Missouri, and they tried contacting them twice, only to report that the Carter Group were unresponsive because they weren’t even members of the Better Business Bureau. Wish I would’ve looked that up before I’d rented from them for 18 months!
The moral of the story is: if you rent from them, be prepared to not have maintenence fix your problems quickly. Purchase extra-​long extension cords so that when the power goes out, you can run your fridge plug out to the hallway (which mysteriously always had power when I didn’t). And above all, do not clean a damn thing when you move out. :)