emperor: (Default)
emperor ([personal profile] emperor) wrote2005-12-12 02:02 pm

Why I hate renting, number 876 in an occasional series

You may recall that when I got back from Daniel's wedding, we discovered that our washer-drier was broken. [livejournal.com profile] atreic phoned Russells, who sent someone round, who frobbed it a bit, and decided that the central control unit was buggered. That's probably going to cost as much as the ancient machine is worth, so he said he'd phone Russells.

[livejournal.com profile] atreic chased Russells up at the end of last week, to be told they'd tried to get hold of the landlady and failed, but had got hold of her mother(!) who said she'd try to get hold of the landlord.

Today [livejournal.com profile] atreic chased them again, to be told that the landlord apparantly has an appliance repair contract (which they knew nothing about, despite managing the property for the past 3 years), and is annoyed that Russells had sent someone to look at the machine. They gave [livejournal.com profile] atreic the details of this policy, and suggested she call them to arrange for someone to come round and do something useful. So, [livejournal.com profile] atreiccalls them. They ask her a series of questions she couldn't answer "how old is the machine?", "When does the policy expire?"[1], and so on, and then say they can't help without answers to these.

So, [livejournal.com profile] atreicthen has to call Russells back and explain this mess. They've now got to shout at the landlord to give them enough information so they can actually get the appliance people to send someone out to look at the machine, at which point we'll have reached stage 1 of the process, again. Over a week after the fucking thing broke.

Inserting a random fourth party into the already-over-beurocratic process of house-renting is just fucking crap, especially if you don't tell anyone you're doing it! And these people will presumably want to waste lots of time, in order to try and avoid paying out.

[livejournal.com profile] atreic has been a star at hassling people about all this, when she really has better things to do with her life.

Err, so if you live near us, we may come and ask nicely to borrow your washing machine :(

[1]err, WTF? surely they should know this? muppets!

[identity profile] senji.livejournal.com 2005-12-12 02:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Blergh, isn't that just typical.

Of course, Russells also failed to know about Mrs. C's electrical-contract-with-British-Gas….
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)

[personal profile] rmc28 2005-12-12 02:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Use ours any time.

[identity profile] arnhem.livejournal.com 2005-12-12 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Ours is at your disposal (although I realise it's not a very useful value of "near").

[identity profile] the-marquis.livejournal.com 2005-12-12 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Let me guess, the contracted repair* people wouldn't discuss details with [livejournal.com profile] atreic becuase of data-protection and she wasn't the account holder.

*there's an image here that might cheer you up.
toothycat: (sunkitten)

[personal profile] toothycat 2005-12-12 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Feel free :) We're just at the top of Histon Road, and can lend you keys.
ext_8103: (Default)

[identity profile] ewx.livejournal.com 2005-12-12 07:08 pm (UTC)(link)
You are welcome to borrow ours, of course.

[identity profile] vyvyan.livejournal.com 2005-12-13 12:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh dear. Our washing machine is also going to be out of commission for a while in the new year, while the letting agents send people round to deal with the rising damp (this involves removing lots of pipes while they replaster the wall, and thus unplumbing the washing machine). I'd invite you to use ours in the meantime, but we don't live very near and several others seem to have offered anyway :-)