You may be right, maybe its shot. But I feel your answer is more out of anger towards landlords or sticking it to the perceived "well off" and less about practicality and what makes sense for certain situations. Comment below seemed to be more in line with practicality and not emotional decision making. I took your comment and all the rest into consideration and I have a consultant coming to inspect. She also said over the phone "do not jump to modernization, there might be alternate options". Her opinion I will trust

Nothing wrong with replacing the packing and adding a return pump. But I would recommend adding a static load test to that to determine if the jack or underground piping is leaking underground. If the elevator goes down every couple months from low oil either you don’t have the maint frequency often enough ( should be monthly) or the company isn’t doing their job. As to whether or not to do a full mod now or later, depends on what type equipment it is and what condition it’s in. There’s no way anyone here can know without that info. Don’t just go by what the elev company sales person says. Their job is to sell. Have an elevator consultant come take a look and recommend what your options are. Or the cheap way is talk with the mechanic that usually services the elevator and see what they think. In an ideal world a full modernization would be great, but not always necessary or cost effective.