Air conditioner nightmares – What can I do?

By QuietEnjoyment

When I moved into my 1 bedroom apartment at the end of February, there was no reason to do more than test that the air-conditioner was functional.  Yeah, it was noticably loud, but it worked.  But in Texas, summer starts in the middle of spring and it wasn’t long before the 100+ temperatures required constant use of the unit.

The placement of these air conditioners is actually something of a joke (I have always thought, because I’ve lived in another apartment owned by this business and it was setup just the same).  It’s a window/wall unit that is set in a cut-out between the living room and bedroom.  Most of it is in the bedroom, but it also cools the living room thanks to a hole in the wall between them.

Last month, my boyfriend started having a horrible ringing in his ears.  He went to a doctor who could find nothing wrong with him, but put him on steroids to see it that would help.  It didn’t, but this seemed to flare up when the hot weather had made it necessary to use the window unit all day and night.  He noticed that the ringing would lessen when he’d been at work all night, so we considered that the air conditioner might be damaging his hearing. He called the doctor and the doctor confirmed that prolonged exposure to the loud noise could cause tinnitus.  Putting some faith in an app he downloaded, my boyfriend checked the decible level of the unit.  I don’t put much stock in phone apps for that, but he said the reading was in the 80s. 

We called up the apartment rental office to ask them to fix the unit, and the receptionist giggled at the problem and said she’d put in the work order.  Two weeks passed and nobody came out, so when we went to pay the rent, we asked again.  A different receptionist checked the files and said there had never been an order put in.  She took us much more seriously and put in the order.  The general maintenance guy came in the next day, looked at the unit and said "That’s not loud at all.  We’re working on someone else’s a/c so we’ll be back in the morning."

The morning came and went and nobody showed up.  It was a Friday before a holiday weekend, so we figured they had some serious emergencies to wrap up before the weekend.  The following Tuesday, we still hadn’t had a return visit, so Wednesday morning when I left for work, my boyfriend called them back and they sent an A/C repairman to look at it.  He said "Yes, it’s very loud, I could hear it from the parking lot and knew which apartment to go to.  It’s your compressor and there’s no way I can get to it."

He said "The only thing there is to do is get a new unit and the apartment won’t do that as long as it’s actually cooling.  The new units don’t fit the space and in order to put a new one in, they’ll have to cut a bigger area out of the wall and take down the bricks around the outside, so you’ll have a big hole in your wall for a while."

Upon the suggestion that they swap out another old unit from a vacant apartment, they said it was very unlikely but we’d be at the top of the list for one.  The alternative would be to try for a transfer, but moving and getting all the utilities transfered (along with change of address at work/bank/etc.) would be much more complicated than living with a whole in the wall for a while.  I would be willing to do that if they would, but as long as the unit is functional, they won’t consider it.

We’re going to try to tough it out with some earplugs for the next few hot months, but I really don’t want to see my boyfriend going nearly insane from the ringing in his ears.  Is there any legal action we can take in this situation?  All we want is for them to consider a new unit, or even swapping another old one.  Until this, I’ve liked living there.  I really don’t want to move again (and I don’t want to be on bad terms with this agency, because they own most of the apartments in this town).  It really bothers me that I don’t have an answer to my boyfriend’s problem.

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