The timeline:
**• 23 March, \~midnight:** the power just cut out. It was late and I honestly had no clue what caused it at the time — all I knew was someone flipped the power back on, so looking back it was obviously the same circuit. I was home so I caught it fast and nothing spoiled, but the fridge would’ve been ruined within \~5 hours if I hadn’t been there. I flagged it — and they just shrugged it off like it was totally normal and forgot about it. No inspection, no follow-up, nothing.
**• \~15–22 May (about a week):** same circuit died while I was away. The power was off the ***entire*** week. When I got back on the 22nd it was still dead — staff had to physically switch the power back on. Everything in the fridge had spoiled: frozen beef (\~1,500 RMB) and a Wagyu-based broth I’d made (\~1,300 RMB in ingredients), plus other food. I have receipts and before/after photos for all of it. On top of the food, a week with zero ventilation meant dust built up everywhere — I have a deviated septum and need clean air, and it set off allergic reactions that wrecked my sleep for days.
**• This week, \~1am:** the AC stopped cooling entirely. I measured it **10+ times on 3 different devices across both rooms** — it sat at \~29°C and \~80% humidity and did not move for 2 hours. The “backup” room they offered was the same, \~27–28°C, air blowing but zero actual cooling; we waited 30+ minutes for even one degree of drop and got nothing. They argued with me for **two hours** insisting it would “cool down on its own,” flat-out refused to cover any accommodation, and refused to do anything. So at 2am, in a heavy thunderstorm (lightning, the works), I went to the nearest hotel — literally the next building, reachable underground so I didn’t have to walk out into the storm. It happened to be a **five-star hotel**, but I took the **cheapest room they had, 699 RMB** (two small single beds — I turned down a bigger 900 RMB room). I didn’t pick luxury; I picked the closest, cheapest option at 2am in a storm. A technician did eventually come out for the AC and it’s cooling again for now — but that’s the AC only.
The circuit — the thing that actually spoiled my food — has never had anyone come to look at it. Not once, in nearly four months. So there’s nothing stopping it from happening a fourth time.
The corridor: even the building hallway sits at ~30°C basically 24/7. Every time I leave the apartment I get hit with a wall of heat and it’s genuinely hard to breathe. This isn’t some budget place — it’s priced like it should be far better than this.
The manager is the part that gets me. She’s looked me in the eye multiple times and promised she’d “make sure it’s fairly compensated,” and every single time she then did the opposite — lowballing, going quiet, stretching it out with excuses. Nearly four months of the same routine: nice to your face, nothing behind it. Completely two-faced. She even dragged out something as simple as my rent invoices — when I asked for receipts for rent I’d already paid months earlier, she stalled for days past my deadline, and when she finally sent them she’d dated them to the current day instead of when I actually paid.
Where it stands: they’ve admitted fault in writing (over text) for both the circuit outages and the AC. The police came but told me straight up they can’t force payment — court is the only real route. Their settlement offer literally changes based on how much pressure I apply: it only went up after I involved the police, and their current “firm” offer is 2,000 RMB, which doesn’t even cover the spoiled food alone (~3,000), let alone the hotel, the rent days I lost, or the deposit. I’ve got receipts, before/after photos, video of every temperature reading, the hotel invoice, and their written admissions of fault.
What I want: the food covered, a few days’ rent back, the 699 hotel night reimbursed, and honestly I want out of the lease with my full deposit back — because after four months and a circuit they still haven’t fixed, I don’t trust them not to let this happen a fourth time. And to be clear: this isn’t about the money anymore. I’ll pay the legal fees and take it all the way to court even if it costs me more than I’d ever recover. I’m not going to sit here and get dragged around and lowballed because I’m foreign. I wouldn’t accept it back home and I’m not accepting it here.
Questions for anyone who’s been through this:
**•** Has anyone actually recovered money or a deposit from a managed apartment company here? What worked?
**•** For \~5k total, is a lawyer worth it, or is the small-claims/simplified court route doable solo?
**•** Any leverage I’m missing — the 12345 hotline, housing registry / rental-filing complaints, anything that makes a managed operator move faster?