Tenant Complaining About Strength of Wi-Fi Network

Christopher Freeman · 2018-09-02T19:01:11-07:00

Hi all,We have some college student tenants whom we inherited from the previous owner. Most of them are fine, but one of them is very needy. The legacy lease provides internet, which we have provided and which works in the common areas of her unit, and which also works in two remote bedrooms (albeit not at lightning speeds) via a Wi-Fi extender that we provided as a courtesy.My business partner has tested the Wi-Fi in her bedroom three times, and has been able to connect and load webpages. He also watched the tenant connect and load webpages. My understanding is that she is not able to stream Netflix on her smart TV. She's complained to her father, who is a co-signer on her lease, and he has gone into helicopter parent mode harassing us to "fix" the problem. Based on the content of his messages, we have learned that the tenant is feeding him misleading information about her complaint (we believe that she is trying to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that her complaint does not pertain to her ability to do schoolwork as she has maintained, but rather to watch Netflix).The lease states that landlord provides internet. It does not state that we provide Wi-Fi, or guarantee coverage in all areas of the apartment. We aren't trying to screw anyone on technicalities, but we've already provided a free extender, and offered to give the tenant a $50 credit towards purchasing her own extender if she feels that would help. I believe that we met the requirements of the lease when we made internet available within the unit, and exceeded it when we provided the extender and offered to help them buy additional equipment. I don't want to train the tenant to expect technical support on her devices from us, and I also don't want to spend the next three months test driving equipment and configuring tenant devices on the network. In my last email, I told the tenant's father the the technical support he is requesting is beyond our expertise, the scope of our business, and the requirements of the lease.Based on this background, do you feel we are being reasonable? How would you have handled this situation, and is there anything we might do differently in the future to help manage tenant's expectations from the get go?Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Mark H.

Richmond, VA · Member since 2016 · 215 posts · 129 votes

8y

From a landlord perspective, I would get out of the internet business. Unless all of your competition is providing this and it is essentially a defacto requirement in your area in order to rent a unit, there's just too many things that can cause problems (legally and otherwise).

From a technical perspective, I do networking and server administration for a living and I would be complaining as well especially as I'm assuming your lease doesn't say "internet is for school related usage only." Going to a device, loading a webpage, and saying that it works is like going to a sink, turning it on all the way, getting a slow drip, and saying the sink works. If I were her, I'd be complaining too. I should be able to sit in my room and have functional internet. Yes, Netflix can be very bandwidth intensive if the bandwidth is there. It will also degrade down to about 5 megabit before failing to work. My dad has an 8 megabit DSL connection, works just fine. So if her's isn't working, she's getting less than than.

Part of the problem is the repeaters. They kill speed because your device makes a request, the request goes to the extender, the extender then repeats the request and the same thing happens on the reverse. They're great if you have little to no signal because now you have more than you had, but they do slow things down.

I suspect the problem with the wifi signal is in one of two places. From the sounds of it, you're using the wifi embedded in the modem that the ISP is providing. These are generally "cheap" units as no big business is going to pop for the quality units they're deploying to hundreds of homes. The other potential problem source is most routers provicde 2.4ghz and 5ghz signals. The 5ghz signals almost can't even pass through a piece of paper (ok, I'm exaggerating somewhat), but they do degrade quickly the more they have to pass through walls and such.

I also wouldn't discount the damage a simple staircase can do to wifi signals. I have one in the line of sight between my router and my bedroom. Don't know what's inside that staircase, but it kills the signal. Ended up replacing my cheap Linksys router with a much more expensive Asus router and all my signal issues went away.

So while there's probably not much you can do for her, you are essentially her internet provider and if I were in her place, I'd be complaining too.

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Christopher Freeman

OP

Rental Property Investor · Keene, NH · Member since 2018 · 115 posts · 73 votes

8y

@Mark H., thank you for taking the time to write out a comprehensive response. I do agree with your assessment that this would be frustrating for the tenant. As a landlord, do you feel that my response to their ongoing emails was appropriate (see ^^ a couple posts).

Tenant Complaining About Strength of Wi-Fi Network

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