Hello! Just wanted to share some notes on my experience with RentRedi. I was not going to but I noticed BP is now promoting RentRedi again on their recent podcasts so just want to share with others before people decide to switch. I have only 3 doors that I manage so not a big time player so wanted to start with some cheaper software and I heard on the podcasts that RentRedi was included in my pro membership so I signed up. I was trying to appeal to the next generation with more app-based management rather than phone calls and emails. I started to notice some issues early on when I tried to get some new tenants screened and signed up. Then more issues started to pop up over time. Here are just some of my notes:
1) Using RentRedi to post my properties did not give me an option to save the lead photo, and this is HUGE because it is the first photo/thumbnail that shows on the listings in Zillow, Realtor.com, etc. Basically I would upload and organize my photos in RentRedi and I would publish and the lead photo would be like of the driveway or laundry area. After talking to support (who were actually quite responsive and helpful), they told me I had to publish the ad with only one photo first and then re-post the ad with additional photos later to force the first photo to be first. Not efficient!
2) After the tenants were screened and I wanted to "approve" them and add them as tenants. There was no "assign to property" option and basically I had to re-add their profiles to assign them to a property, which was clunky. (Maybe I missed something here with this one).
3) The app is TERRIBLE. And that is one of the main things I wanted to get RentRedi for in the first place. If you tried to use the app to look at photos of your ads or look at the "charges" for rent payments and such it was pretty much unreadable and would have several glitches making things overlay on top of each other and such. I unfortunately basically had to switch to desktop to use the software.
4) Tenants have to pay a $1 transfer fee to pay through RentRedi. Which ok, I get it, ACH cost money, BUT, RentRedi does not give the landlord the option to pay that. (Also I'll note, Venmo, Zelle, etc. do not req this). So I told my tenants I wanted to switch to RentRedi for payments because it was more streamlined than collecting checks and such but then they would be forced to pay the $1 transfer fee. Which is not a lot of money at all but my leases make no mention of this so the tenant had the right to say no. Because I was so annoyed with RentRedi on this I just told my tenants I would discount their rent by $1 every month. Which made my tracking for taxes and such all look super dumb because everything is off by a dollar. And THEN, the same $1 fee is required when doing a transfer to pay me their utility bills, so then I discounted those by $1 too. RentRedi needs an option to have the landlord pay this OR just bake it into the monthly cost.
5) RentRedi introduced a feature to allow my tenants to report their rent to the credit bureaus to improve their credit score (cool). But, at one of the properties, the tenants split their portions of the rent. So one tenant pays their 50% in RentRedi and the other pays 50% in RentRedi and as long as it equals 100% at the end of the month, everything is good. But, one of the tenants said they might not make their rent payment on time, which meant technically they both would be late on rent. This raised the question to the other tenant, "would I be docked for late rent on my credit score if the other tenant doesn't pay on time?". We now know the answer is NO because RentRedit only reports on-time rent. BUT then, the tenant complained that they were paying for the credit boosting feature in RentRedi and would not be getting their credit-benefit if the other tenant didn't pay on time. Which was true. Ultimately it was sorted because I clarified they legally had a joint responsibility to pay the total rent and there wasn't even an option for "half" the renters to pay late. But regardless, this was really confusing how the credit boosting stuff worked with a property with multiple tenant profiles and I wish this has been clearer how it worked in that case.
6) My duplex has two addresses. Lets just say 100 and 101 for example. One foyer entry and then two different doors after that which I labeled 100 and 101. This is extremely common in Detroit area. RentRedi had no ability to manage this. 100 was the primary address of the property, which would show on google maps and such, and then 101 was an additional address that I legally owned and wanted to use (same structure). But RentRedi only saw the property as 100. So when I tried to list it, the first unit on Zillow would show as "100 Example St." and then when I tried to list the next unit I had to put in a unit number so I tried to put "101 Example St." but on Zillow that would show as "100 Road St. Unit 101" which was just confusing. And if I didn't put any unit at all it would post on Zillow as "100 Road St. UNCLASSIFIED" in ALL CAPs like that which looked terrible. I don't think the word was unclassified but something similar. I eventually changed it to "100 Road St. UPPER FLOOR" which wasn't great but it's the best option support had for me.
Bonus: So, eventually I had some tenants get on board that were older and not tech savvy so there was going to be no way to get the to use RentRedi anyways, so I decided to cancel. And here is where I actually got properly annoyed. When I went to cancel my membership, RentRedi gives you a large box in which you can describe to them why you decided to cancel, and there was a SHORT and hidden character limit! I tried to provide constructive feedback on why it was not worth continuing with RentRedi and all the sudden I couldn't type anymore (it was about 3-4 sentences I got cut off). So I erased it all and basically put in something like. "To sum it up, your software is not nearly refined enough to be a paid service. Case and point being I cannot even tell you what went wrong because this feedback box cuts me off after a few sentences, have a good da."
BUT WAIT, there's more: Then when I hit submit, I got a message "your payment method has been removed successfully. I was like huh? But whatever, I guess that works. So now I get an email from RentRedi EVERY DAY that says "your payment method has failed". See screenshot below. I'm a very patient customer, so I just let it go, but then I saw the BP podcast was promoting them again. Hopefully the software has been improved in the last year. Can anyone confirm? If so, I will see if I can delete this thread. Otherwise, be cautious before signing up! Thanks :)
-Will
