“If you call past 5 p.m., you’re directed to voicemail or someone who can’t help you,” said Cole Rosengren, who moved into a Vantage building in Sunnyside a few months ago. Rosengren became so frustrated with the landlord that he joined the Queens Vantage Tenants Council, an advocacy group that promotes residents’ interests, as his building’s leader.
   Other residents also complain about the 800 number, saying they are put on perpetual hold or repeatedly disconnected when they call.
   Aside from the aggravation of working through the hotline, they say, it’s illegal not to have a super. The city’s Housing Maintenance Code requires that owners of apartment buildings either live in the buildings themselves or employ janitors, commonly called supers, to take care of cleaning and maintenance. The janitors must either be live-in or reside within 200 feet of the building they service.
   In December 2008, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development gave Vantage permission to offer the 24-hour hotline in lieu of a super in 14 of its nearly 80 buildings in Queens, but two months ago the department rescinded that permission and told the company to hire janitors and address additional code violations in 28 other buildings.
   So far, supers haven’t been hired though, so QVTC members sat down with Vantage CEO Neil Rubler two weeks ago to outline their grievances. Having supers in all buildings was just one of 19 demands that the tenants group presented to the real estate company at the Oct. 13 meeting. The group also asked that Vantage’s office in Long Island City be open on evenings and weekends, be staffed with multilingual representatives and address what tenants see as chronic, egregious billing errors.
   Hundreds of residents complain that their rent bills regularly contain major mistakes in Vantage’s favor, which the company often is not quick to correct. Others claim that even when bills are accurate and payment is submitted on time, Vantage fails to cash the checks until after the due date and then charges residents late fees. QVTC therefore asked Vantage to include clear explanations of additional charges, accept rent checks in person rather than requiring them to be mailed and provide residents with receipts.
   Finally, the tenants council demanded that Vantage answer phone calls 24 hours a day, that residents receive complaint numbers when they call and that communications, maintenance requests and billing inquiries be documented.
   Fearing that their demands were falling on deaf ears, QVTC organized a rally outside a Vantage building in Sunnyside on Monday. Less than an hour before the gathering — where some 50 tenants and elected officials chanted “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” and “Hey hey! Ho ho! Vantage has to go!” — the company issued a response.
   Vantage promised to keep its customer service center open until 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays and to add Saturday morning hours. It also promised to freeze all new late fees, hire additional personnel for its call center to cut down on wait times and develop a customer service website where tenants can check their rent status and request repairs.
   By the end of the month, Vantage said, residents who visit the L.I.C. office or call the hotline will receive tracking numbers so they can more easily follow up and will receive concrete time estimates of how long it will take to get their problems fixed. Within a year, the company said, most written communications will be provided in Spanish as well as English.
   Vantage didn’t make definitive promises about supers, saying only that it is “committed to ensuring that all our residents feel comfortable that a Vantage employee is at their service” and that the company is “exploring the possibility of having building staff accept maintenance requests.”
   Spokesman Davidson Goldin couldn’t give an exact timeline of when supers might make their debuts but said the company is “working closely ... to achieve that in a timely manner.” He noted that in buildings with no vacant apartments, supers can only move in if someone else moves out.
   Goldin also said that Vantage, which first came to the area four years ago and now owns about 80 apartment buildings in Queens, hasn’t actually removed any supers; the 14 buildings in question didn’t have live-in staff under the previous landlords either.
   QVTC disputes that claim. “We know for a fact that at 43-43 91st Pl., super Martin Garcia was removed and not replaced,” said tenants council member Lauren Springer.“Regardless of whether the lack of supers predates Vantage’s purchase of buildings, as soon as they owned the buildings, they were required to comply with the Housing Maintenance Code.”
   Goldin said the company wants to be a positive force in the neighborhood and is seeking to change the often adversarial nature of landlord-tenant relations in the city.
   Many tenants aren’t feeling the professed good will though. Since it started taking over buildings in Queens four years ago, Vantage has aroused the ire of renters and local politicians, who complain that the landlord is unresponsive, neglects maintenance problems, uses sneaky tactics to procure excessive fees and has been trying to force out low-income families.
   In 2008, a group of tenants even sued the company, accusing the real estate giant of deceptive business practices and tenant harassment. That suit is still pending, and in Washington Heights in Manhattan, a similar suit was filed last month.
   QVTC’s efforts, coupled with pressure from the lawsuits, seem to be having an effect, though, tenants say.
   “There seems to have been a decrease in the number of baseless court proceedings based on non-payment of rent and non-primary residence allegations,” Springer said, though she added that there is still “pressure to harass and displace tenants in other forms.”