Noise Complaints

My husband has been in maintance for over 3 years and he loves everything about it...except noise complaints! We work for different management companies and the one I work for has residents call the police not the emergency maintenance. I'm curious... how do you handle noise complaints?

Police!

We ask that they call our office to let us know (of course they have no problem doing this) and then the police. Especially after hours!!

If my on call guy starts getting those calls we send a reminder flyer with a list of reasons to call the emergency number.


Good luck!

Thanks Michelle. He's out on a noise complaint right now. 9 times out of 10 he doesn't hear a thing. One time he got called at 1 in the afternoon! It's crazy!

Now- We had a weird noise complaint that wasn't loud music or yelling - More of a unexplained pumping sound. Int hat case we had the on call maintenance man respond for a week to it just to try to pin point the cause.

Hi Angela,
As you already know, some companies have the on call maintenance person respond to the call, others have 'courtesy patrol' respond and still others, say call the police. If it happens during business hours, the resident usually calls the office. My concern would be for my staff~~anything can happen. I much prefer to have the police called.
Gerry

I have the residents call the police as well. I live on site and I have taken several calls regarding noise but there is very little you can do without their being documentation for the noise problem. I will even contact the police on their behalf if necessary. Usually, the police will notify me that they have received the complaint prior to coming to the property and I usually investigate first and if it's a unit that has had more than one complaint I allow the police to handle it and give out a citation. If I do not feel it is a noise issue I will handle the call myself. At least there is documentation of a call being placed to the police for a noise issue.

I have always explained it to my residents that my goal is to make sure everyone lives in a nice and quiet environment so everyone can enjoy their homes. I cannot do that if I do not have the proper documentation from the proper authorities. The courts will not be in my favor if I tried to resolve the issue without a police report documenting the noise if it came down to an eviction for violating the community rules.

You would need to discuss with your supervisor what the rules are in regards to maintenance on call duties. If handling noise complaints are something they feel is the responsibility of the maintenance person on-call then you would need to follow their guidelines and monitor the OT spent on these calls to try to change their minds. It's about customer service and some companies feel it is worth the extra money spent to have these issues handled in house. Although, Gerry did bring up a valid point in regards to safety and hopefully maintenance is trained to know when police involvement is necessary.