Mira Apartments Tempe - Advice & Warnings: Recommendation; DO NOT RENT FROM MARK TAYLOR PROPERTIES ~ More of a rant type thing
TL;DR: Two weeks of dead internet at Mira Apartments in Tempe. Management passed me to the ISP, the ISP passed me back, nobody fixed anything, nobody took responsibility, nobody offered credit. They market "MT+" internet and smart home package as an optional service, but the building is not wired to let you use any other provider, so "optional" is functionally a lie (or isn't a lie insofar as "wifi is optional"). Semester starts in weeks. Read your goddamn lease. Big ticket takeaway: renters will do everything to save their ass in a contract, and do nothing to afford you a win.
In order:
You tour the place. Internet is included. It is on the amenity sheet, it is in the pitch, it is baked into what you are paying. Great, one less bill, one less thing to set up before classes. You sign. Bang!
You move in and it does't work. Not slow. Not spotty. Two weeks of dropping every few minutes, speeds that cannot load a single Canvas page, and long stretches of just fucking nothing.
You report it like an adult. And you get the runaround, which is the part that made me genuinely lose it. The office tells you it is the provider's problem. So you call the provider. The provider tells you it is the building's problem and that they'd give you a timeline (they've obfuscated blame toward upstream providers more than five times). So you go back to the office. And you do this loop over and over while both of them stand there pointing at each other, and at no point does anyone with authority to fix it ever end up on the other end of the line. We get a big nothing burger shoved down our throat (zero damn repair timeline). No credit for the amenity you are paying for and not receiving. Just an infinite handoff designed to make you get fatigued and stop asking. We can't do anything, and living here has become a nightmare.
They market their "MT+" internet as an optional service. Optional. As in, you have a choice, as in, if you do not like it you can go get your own. Except the building is not wired to let you do that.
There is no alternative. You cannot call Cox. You cannot call Century Link. You cannot run your own line. The physical infrastructure of the building does not permit a competitor, so the "option" they are describing does not exist and cannot exist. They built a monopoly into the walls and then wrote the word "optional" on it. That is not a technicality, that is a straight up lie about the nature of what you are buying. You are a captive customer with a captive product and they know it, and every person in that office knows exactly what they are doing when you walk in.
Out comes the lease clause! A clause disclaiming any guarantee of internet quality, availability, or speed. Buried and never walked through. Never mentioned once during the tour where they were busy telling me internet was included.
They advertise it to sell you the unit. They wire the building so you cannot practically buy it from anybody else. They take your money for it every month. And they wrote themselves a clause saying they owe you nothing when it does not work.
You do not end up with a captive ISP, a service disclaimer, and a call-center loop by accident. Whatever the intent, the result is the same: you pay full price for a thing they are contractually free to never deliver.
And who is it pointed at? Students! In a building marketed to students. In a corporate portfolio full of other buildings marketed to students. People signing their first lease, people new to the state, people with no lawyer, no money for a lawyer, no idea what rent abatement is, and who will be so buried in coursework by week three that they give up and eat it. That is not who they accidentally caught. That is the target. You are not a tenant here, you are a revenue unit that arrives in August, does not read fine print, does not sue, and leaves in May.
In a few weeks every one of us is running our entire academic life through that dead, unreliable connection. Canvas. Zoom. Proctored exams that lock your browser and fail you outright when the connection drops mid session. Portals with hard midnight deadlines. And your professor is not going to want to hear about your apartment wifi, because why would they.
So functionally what I am paying for is the privilege of not being able to work where I live. I am going to be doing every assignment this semester at Hayden, hauling my shit across campus, timing my life around library hours, because the apartment I pay rent on cannot do the one thing they advertised. I am paying student housing prices for a place I cannot be a student in.
If you live at Mira, or at any of the other complexes near campus dealing with this same shit right now: comment or DM me.
If you are about to sign anywhere in Tempe: open the lease PDF and search "internet," "utilities," "services," "provider," and "warranty" before you sign a single thing. If there is a clause disclaiming service quality on something they advertised as included, they are telling you in advance that the amenity is decorative. Then ask them, out loud, in the office, which other providers the building is wired for. Watch what happens to their ugly faces.
Read your lease. Save your receipts. Do not let these people harass you up the rectum, because that is the entire scheme.
P.S. I know I didn't read my lease correctly, and didn't ask the correct questions when I moved in. Don't bully me. First apartment ts. To those who randomly know: NA west got bailed 😡.