Business ProfileforRaines Property Management

Late evening on 3/11, the single toilet in our apartment went clogged for no recognizable reason, so we called the emergency line listed on Raines' website to see if they could help and got transferred by a coordinator to a maintenance personnel. He asked if we had plunged it first, we said no we don't have a plunger. He then said we must plunge the toilet before they would help and if they came out only to find the toilet needed to be plunged, we would be charged a fee. So we asked if he knew where we could get a plunger, he said probably nowhere this hour. After an awkward silence, the conversation ended. While disappointing at the fact that he was not going to come help with the emergency, we ran out in cold weather to ******** right before it closed at midnight, got a plunger and fortunately, cleared the toilet. We would have otherwise suffered throughout the night but that's not the end of story. The next day around 10:30am, another personnel showed up unexpectedly in our apartment with a plugger, and days later we got a $35 "minimum charge for the trip" bill from Raines and were accused of not calling back to report that we had solved the issue ourselves. But, we only called for an emergency and didn't receive appropriate help nor empathy. Nobody cared how we got through the night and somebody came at their convenience during normal biz. hours to deal with the emergency request. At NO point during the conversation were we informed that they would send out someone to address the issue the next day, never did we request help next day. Otherwise we would have certainly called back as this is common sense/basic courtesy. Our many efforts disputing this charge were simply ignored by Raines ever since their only reply saying "You are going to have to be responsible" for the charge that was later forcefully added to our rent balance. My roommate and I ended up having to pay to avoid more late fee that would have been rendered, but still feel wronged and disrespected.