Riverfront Village — Local services in Tuscaloosa

I lived here for 2 years primarily due to the location on the Riverwalk. The location was the best part, as I have 2 dogs. However, management and the facility itself are definitely not worth the price.

The building was put up quickly & cheaply. There were cracks in the walls in both of my units. Some days my bedroom door wouldn’t close and others it would get stuck. When I called maintenance about this, they said the frame of the doorway shifted because the foundation of the building changed with the level of the river. 5-star quality. There was often vomit in the elevators and the halls have a disgusting smell. You become immune to the smell after several months… however, any guest you have will likely comment on it and ask how on earth you handle it. You’ll softly smile and think of the days when you didn’t live in a building that smelled like the inside of a dumpster on a hot summer day. The grass has dog poop everywhere, & the first floor of the garage often floods.

Now it is time to discuss management. I’d like to state that the office workers are nice. I truly enjoyed most of them and they were as helpful as they could be. But the assistant manager has a degree in BS. I was blatantly lied to during the time where they were assigning roommates last fall. I was asked if I wanted to live with a girl with a dog and I said no. I was then told I wasn’t going to be with her, but I was able to see the list on one of the employee’s desks and I was still placed with her. The assistant manager (Sara) then lied to me that they “didn’t know if she had a dog.” This girl was already living at the complex with her dog. I had to get a doctor’s note and turn it in to not be with this girl and her untrained and aggressive dog. There was an actual conversation that I had with Sara where she told me they still didn’t know who my roommate was or if they would have a dog, and then I said “just so you know I’m getting a doctor’s note saying I can’t be with any other dogs,” and she responded with an audible sigh and, “ugh, you are making my job hard.” Seriously? You lie to my face you don’t know who I’m with and then the moment I spoil your plan you show your cards? Someone else got stuck with dog girl, without notice, and after several horrible weeks had to threaten legal action to get the girl with the aggressive dog in a different apartment. Turns out that Riverfront forcing her to be with this girl actually went against what was written in the lease.

Then there was a day when I had an expensive computer delivered and the office closed early without notifying us, and when I went to pick it up the girl working said there was nothing she could do until the weekend was over. This was on a Friday… and because she felt on move in day the following day there would be no possible moment an employee could walk 5 feet to open the closet that it was in. My father had to call the manager for me to be able to get it the following day.

A group of maintenance men walked in without knocking once, that was great. I hadn’t even placed a work order or received any warning that they would be coming. It is like privacy roulette!

I moved out in mid-May and dropped off my key and everything. I forgot a cord and returned 2 days later to find my lights on in my closet and bathroom. Maintenance had left them on. They were going to run for the following 2 months had I not gone in there. I informed management when I left the final time. I recently received my final electricity bill and it was higher than several months when I lived there with the AC on. Considering I left the AC and lights off and my unit was completely unoccupied… it strongly appears that maintenance went in there and tampered again. No one responded to my first 2 emails about it, the person who actually could help me wouldn’t talk to me on the phone, and I didn’t get an actually helpful email response until I mentioned leaving a review. So… if you do decide to live here… mention you will leave a review because that is the only way they will maybe give you the time of...

If you were thinking about living in Riverfront village apartments in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I would highly recommend against it. We have lived here for less than a month and have already encountered so many issues. Me and my roommates toured here in the summer and were shown a gorgeous clean room but don’t be fooled by their bait and switch. When we signed our lease the summer prior to the fall, we were told we would be in a riverfront balcony apartment and would be paying a $25 fee for the view. My roommate contacted the office of the apartments multiple times over the summer to ensure that our moving process would go smoothly and we would be in the room we were supposed to.

Upon moving, we walked into an apartment that was completely disgusting. The entire apartment reeked of smoke. There was a coat of dust and dirt over everything in the apartment. The floorboards, which are painted white, had a black coat sitting on the top. All of our furniture was coated as well. After further looking around the room there was paint missing on our doors where they had just left spackle. The couches in the living room are ripped. The floors are scratched, and there’s a gaping hole in our floor. There were also cracks along the ceiling in our living room. Riverfront village is supposed to be a furnished department yet upon moving in one of my roommates was missing furniture in her room and only was given a chair. There was mold on our bathrooms and in our showers as well as in the washing machine. The appliance and cabinets were so gross that we wouldn’t even dare to put food or plates in them. Our utility closet door was also covered and mold and dust. It was completely uninhabitable so we weren’t able to move in until 36 hours after our designated move-in time.

During the 36 hours they were supposed to come in and deep clean our apartment. We were also told that the apartment we were given did not have a Riverview by management, but we still have to pay the $25 fee for the premium view. We were also given a black trashcan that we are required to keep in our room or there will be a fee. That so called trashcan is absolutely disgusting and looks like it has dust and mold in it. We were also given an envelope that was supposed to contain our room keys. All of which the envelopes were missing. We also pay $10 for a parking pass which we didn’t receive for the first 2 weeks.

When we were able to move back in, we still had to go back and deep clean everything because barely anything had been cleaned. We still also had many broken appliances. Our sink, fans, oven, and my roommates mirror in her bathroom were broken. We were told to file maintenance request, and that they would be fixed in a timely efficient manner. We were also told that the hole in our floor as well as the cracks in the ceiling would not be fixed. We waited two weeks, after multiple calls to the office, for our fans and mirror only to be fixed. Not to mention the first maintenance request that we placed were marked as complete even though no one came.

Our apartment is also completely infested with roaches and ants. For three weeks now we have been told we were placed on the exterminators list yet no one has come. We have placed multiple calls and gone down to the office to enlighten them on this issue and nothing has been done. Me and my roommates had go and spend our own money to buy poison and traps just to try to exterminate our own apartment as it’s completely unlivable with the amount of bugs we have. There are at least 50 grown and baby roaches crawling around our kitchen cabinets, pantry, laundry, and even our dishwasher. We even had to use a comb to pick roaches eggs out of our carpet.

The apartment amenities itself are no better. There is a massive dumpster at the entrance to the building that smells horrible. The exterior door to the building doesn’t lock. Are the promised computer room with printers that we were also promised is empty. The pool also has floating sticky substances in it

If you like to live in filth this is the...

I pay extra for a fully furnished apartment, and upon move-in we were missing a dryer, refrigerator, a bed, desk, chair, and bar stools. The dryer was not delivered for at least a month. The refrigerator was delivered after 2 weeks, but was broken, and took a further 2 days and multiple calls to get anyone to fix it. My roommate lived in the apartment for 3 days before any of her bedroom furniture was delivered. Also upon move in, there was no working air conditioning, and the temperature inside was 98 degrees. The next issues began when I noticed my closet ceiling was covered in mold in August. It took multiple work orders, unreturned calls, and personal visits to the office before they finally came and PAINTED OVER IT. Also, my closet door frame and window pane frame both drip water every time it rains (so much that it fills a line of 7 cups to the brim). I had sent in multiple work orders which were either cancelled or “completed” without anyone ever actually fixing the problem. I developed a very bad case of mono in January 2022, and I believe a large part of my health issues can be attributed to living in a mold infested, water damaged apartment. After all of these issues which were never dealt with by riverfront, they began construction outside of our apartment without any notice around April 2022. The crew began ripping the siding off of our apartment, and when I went out to ask the crew about the work they were doing (because nobody at riverfront would tell me), I was told (and could visibly see) that they were replacing the mold ridden framing of the apartment. They have been doing this work all around the complex, and if you go drive around you can see the mold everywhere! As a law student in the midst of finals, being unexpectedly awoken by construction every morning at 7am was frustrating to say the least. After this, the crew put a tarp over the side of the building to protect from further water damage, and the blue tarp is completely nailed down over all of our windows. We have lived without sunlight in our apartment for over a month now, do not have proper ventilation for the water damage within our apartment, and have no emergency escape in case of fire. Riverfront has done nothing to try and move us to a unit where there are windows, they have given us no rent reduction, have not agreed to supply a credit to live in a hotel, etc.. They simply said “sorry for the inconvenience”. My roommate and I have never been provided a mail key to access our mailbox. In august 2021, I had to ask office personnel to let me into my mailbox, but they told me they couldn’t give me the key at that time for some reason. Flash forward to now (I haven’t had issues since because I normally receive packages that go to the mailroom), my roommate received information regarding her car registry/license in the mailbox, and the office personnel now say there is NO KEY for our mailbox. Because riverfront somehow lost our mail key, they now say it is our responsibility to go to the post office and ask to be issued new keys. I have lived in multiple apartments, and never heard anything this absurd. They told us that the prior tenant did not return their mail key, so this is why we have these problems, but in my experience in a case like this, it is Riverfront’s responsibility to dispose of the old keys (because there is a stranger out there with access to our mail), and take steps to issue us new ones. Riverfront Village is managed by a completely incompetent team that fails to respond to work orders, fails to respond to calls, fails to take action when you go to personally see them in the office, fails to notify its residents of anything, and fails to maintain a livable apartment complex. If you call them, don’t ever expect a call back. If you email them, don’t expect an email back. If you make a work order, expect it to be cancelled. If you want to live in an apartment that cares about its residents whatsoever, don’t live at...