Apartment Savvy targets the dumbest renters on the planet

Apartment Savvy, one of the rental services on our do-not-call list, has been reviewed 85 times at the Google Places page for its 2835 N Clark St office.

Almost all of the reviews give the company 5 stars, and almost all of them are so patently phony that they’ll leave you laughing and wondering. Can any company possibly be stupid enough to think these reviews help it? Why would a company hire such brain-dead reviewers?

User Beanstock is a good example. He reviews Apartment Savvy on April 6, 2012:

Tara was exceptionally helpful and showed apartments that were exactly what I described and what I was looking for. I’m incredibly happy with the apartment I found.

Six days later, on April 12, Beanstock reviews Legend Park Apartments in Schaumburg:

I don’t know why everyone seems to not like it here because I’ve been living at Legend Park for over a year now and I love it. … I like it so much that I just renewed my lease and will be staying for at least another year.

Quite a few of Apartment Savvy’s reviewers, despite allegedly living in city apartments, also shop at Crescent Jewelers in Frankfort, get their dental care from Scott Brenner in Vernon Hills, spend occasional nights at a Days Inn in Naperville, shop for cars at Bob Brady Auto Mall in Decatur, have work done by Sutton Siding & Remodeling in Springfield, rent lift trucks from Wise Equipment in Schaumburg – and so on. They unanimously find each others’ reviews helpful – sometimes helpful enough that they copy and paste them as their own.

A number of the Apartment Savvy reviews are written in a generic manner that enables them to be copied and pasted into multiple reviews for almost any company, e.g. “Very quick and helpful.” Those four words are the entire review, and 7 out of 7 people found it helpful!

Apartment Savvy may be doing some niche marketing here – targeting the dumbest renters on the planet. Who else, after all, would do business with a company that tries to gain their business fraudulently and stupidly?

We don’t want to leave you with the impression that Apartment Savvy operates very differently from other Chicago rental services. You’re well advised to avoid all of the rental services and work directly with landlords, management companies, or established, brand-name brokerage firms.

If you’re looking to rent in Chicago’s lakefront neighborhoods, from the South Loop to Lake View, check out YoChicago’s at-a-glance apartment lists and maps and our YoRents service.

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