In Praise of HH Gregg – Continuation

Wow! This is turning into a book…lol

Ok, the last post ended with us moving. We found a nice(we thought)house. It was quite a bit smaller, but it did have a garage (kinda – I could get my car in it, but could not get out of the car, no room to open the doors…) and a huge storage shed out back, along with a big back yard with a privacy fence around it. The yard needed some work, the grass being kinda scraggly, but no biggie. All the carpeting was different colors, but despite less room total, the rooms themselves (except kitchen & dining room) were larger. We moved in May 1st.

On May 10th, at 11:30pm, I had a flood. It was Saturday night, the boy visiting at Stacey’s for the night (Thank Goddess!) and Hunny was at the race track. And when I say flood, I mean FLOOD! One of the main water lines in the wall between the kitchen and laundry room (ok, laundry closet – room for washer, dryer, hot water heater. period) broke. I had 2” of water throughout the hallway, kitchen, bathroom, and bedrooms, in a matter of about 3 minutes. I called the emergency number provided by the rental agency to get a recording directing me to call another number if I was calling about “an emergency.” I thought this qualified, so dialed the number. I was told by the nice lady(!) that answered that there wasn’t anyone available after 10 pm on weekends…

Me: “Ummm, I have a bit of a flood going on here.”
Her: “I’m sorry, we don’t have anyone available after 10pm on weekends.”  
Me: “Ummmm, when I called the maintenance line given to me by the rental agency, it referred me here for after hours emergencies. Was that not accurate?”
Her: “Who’s your rental company?”
Me: **gave company name**
Her: “Yes, we are the after hours emergency service for them.”
Me: “Well, I think this qualifies as an emergency! My house has 2” of water throughout it”
Her: “But we don’t have anyone after 10 pm on weekends.”
Me: “Are you kidding me..? My house has 2 inches of water in it already & guess what? It’s still pouring out of the wall, and I have no idea how to shut it off!”
Her: “Well, I can see where that would be a problem.”
Me: “!?” :Ya think..?”
Her: “But I don’t have anyone…”
Me: “Yes, yes – you don’t have anyone available after 10 on the weekend. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Do you realize that water is quickly filling this house? Carpet is being ruined, walls are being ruined. Are already ruined? And the water is still flowing rapidly into the house..?”
Her: “I’m sorry, I don’t…
Me: “Yanno what..? That’s ok, it’s not MY property that’s being destroyed, and it won’t be my expense to fix it. Anything of mine that IS ruined will be replaced by YOUR company. I suggest you find SOMEONE available after 10 pm on a weekend, or there will be some major expense incurred, and I’m fairly certain that not only your boss, but the rental agency will be extremely unhappy when they find –oh I dunno, by tomorrow..? A FOOT of water throughout this house, all of my personal possessions in need of replacement, and that I did call to report it & got a runaround. I understand that as a rule people calling with emergencies tend to be exaggerating a bit, and that you really don’t want to wake your boss at 11:30 at night just to find someone freaked out over nothing. That is not the situation here. I have water pouring out of my wall at a rate of about 2” every five minutes. It’s been doing it for approximately 20 minutes now, there is standing water in the rooms that have carpeting to absorb it – three bedrooms, the hallway, the dining area & working on the living room carpets are fully saturated! But that’s ok, you don’t have anyone available after 10 pm on a weekend night, and I’ll be sure to let everyone who needs to know just how diligent you were about performing your job & giving me that information!”
Her; *silence*
Me: “Thanks for nothing, have a great night.” and I hung up. What other option did I have..?

I knew the water meter outside could stop the water to the house, but it was 11:30 at night, and a new home. I had no idea where outside it might be, or even if I could get to it if I found it. Meanwhile, water was still pouring out of the wall. I called Hunny and wonder of wonders he was actually on his way home – only about 5 minutes out. HE got the water off & the flood stopped. I also got a phone call from the “no-one-available-after-10pm-on-a-weekend on call person. Although by the time he called Hunny had the water off & was shopvac-ing the house. They sent someone from a flood restoration company out the next morning, who set up these huge fans throughout the house. They ran 24/7 for about a week. Wanna talk about relaxing..? Not.

We ended up having several more floods, mold growing in one of the closets & behind the formica in the kitchen, the kitchen center area broken & the counter pulled away from the wall. Mold under the sink. And I can’t prove it, but I’d almost guarantee mold under the carpets. Yeah, they never replaced them after all the flooding. At least not while we were there. IN addition to that, the wiring was all jacked up. If you ran the microwave & dishwasher at the same time, it flipped the breaker every time. Oh yeah, and their dishwasher died about a week after moving in so we had to use ours. Trying to get stuff fixed was a nightmare.

Now I’m sure many of you are familiar with my propensity to go on, and occasionally exaggerate a bit (what? I’m human – mostly) So, here are some visual props, to lessen your understandable doubts…

The hallway

My computer room – luckily I had that plastic floor/chair mat I could put everything on to get it out of the wet

    

Laundry area & Closet

The kitchen wall the formica & behind it on the wall

The kitchen island area

And this, my friends, was the final straw – this picture was taken in our bedroom when we moved out – yes, you’re seeing properly – that plant was growing out from between the wall & the baseboard…

So you see, no exaggeration this time! And did I mention the air conditioner that froze up in mid-July 100 degree heat..? And that we got all of this for the low, low cost of $850 a month..? Oh yeah – one more pic, our breaker box…

                 

Well, it’s outta time I am again. The old demon work calls, and I must answer.

See ya laterzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!

           

The Latest Word...

Here I am. So far, still kicking, haven't killed anyone yet, although the urge has made itself felt a time or two in the last few days...I'm hesitant to write this, for fear of jinxing it, but I'm pretty sure we  found a house. Right down the street. There are good and bad points...

Good:

• I don't have to change my boy's school.
• We only have to move ALL OUR SHIT (and it's a bunch, I swear! I have no idea how it happened that we can fill a 50 foot car hauler TWICE and still not get it all...For most of my life, everything fit in my car, with room for a passenger...) about two blocks.
• The last tenants were there 4 years with no rent increase (don't get me wrong, I it's not the increase by itself I have issues with, rather the increase combined with lack of, well, everything a landlord should do.)
• Our newest family member is welcome
• There aren't any holes in any walls or doors
• There (why can't I start a sentence properly, with a capital letter, with the second letter being capitalized, too..? Grrrrrrrr my typing is pathetic!) is already a garage door opener. Yes, I know that sounds petty & lazy but look at it from my side...at $925 a month for rent, don't you think I should be able to open the garage without getting rained or snowed on? And they aren't cheap. And why should I invest the time, money & effort to install one when the property owner isn't willing to invest any of the above..?
• The driveway is almost level - again, seemingly petty, but yanno, repairs on brakes & transmissions are costly...
• It has a gas/wood combination fireplace
• The rent is only $875, and he is amenable to weekly deposits from Hunny's employer, so we never have to jack with making sure rent is paid (what happens is this***Listen up Landlords, this is actually a plan that is VERY BENEFICIAL for YOU****we fill out the direct deposit form from his work to have $201.14 deposited into the property owner's designated account, and the balance deposited into ours. The amount is determined by taking the monthly rent ($875) and multiplying it by 12 (months in a year, obviously) and then dividing it by 52 (pay periods in a year). Having it done this way means we never see it, so don't really miss it, I know rent is always paid, I don't have to worry about getting it to him, the property owner knows his money is always going to be there, he'll never hear "The check is in the mail." And I assure you, even thought the base amount stays the same, $201 a week is easier to work around than $875 a month - If it's in my account, waiting to be paid out, it's too much of a temptation to say "I'll just use a little here & put it back" resulting in having to give up basically a whole paycheck one week, and being flat-assed broke for the rest of that week.
• I don't have to change my boy's school.

Bad:

• We're losing about 600 sq. feet
• Uhhhhhhhh...that's really the only bad....unless you consider living within walking distance of the house you moved out of on bad terms bad. (I would truly not be surprised to see them (the new owners) move into the house...that could be awkward, or even possibly cause jail time to become a factor, NO, NO, NO
•   *breathe...breathe* "I will not physically assault anyone else, no matter how badly they deserve it...I will not physically assault anyone else no matter how badly they deserve it...I will not kick the living shit outta that lying bitch...oh, ahem...I will not physically assault anyone else no matter how badly they deserve it *breathe...breathe*)
• Theoretically, neither Christmas nor birthdays (Shayne will be 6 December 13, my older boy Tony will be 23 on December 27) will be ruined again

Ok, that's pretty much it for today. Hunny is meeting him this afternoon to sign papers & give him money. Until then, please keep all fingers & toes crossed that nothing unforeseen interferes... meanwhile, here are the pics from the flyer. Sorry about the poor quality, but they were printed onto regular paper by the property owner, then scanned onto my computer from there...

    

Ok, gotta get ready for work.

See ya laterzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! ! ! !

The last few days....

In my continuing effort to keep those who have faith in me (ha-ha) from looking bad, here I am again. Although it's pretty bad that the only way to get me to post is psychological blackmail, so to speak...but hey, whatever it takes, I guess.

I have been riding a roller coaster stress-wise the past few days. as I said earlier, we have to move. We thought for minit yesterday that maybe we wouldn't have too, but speaking for myself, not really. My Hunny is a bit more of a trusting soul than I am, sweet man that he is. You see, we met with the folks that we are currently renting from, in an effort to come to an agreement we could all live with. A little background...

When we found this house we were very excited. It has the potential to be a very nice house. Mind you, I said potential...It is relatively new, built in the last ten years, I'd say. But it's has also been "rode hard and put away wet" if you know what I mean. Apparently the first owners were unable to keep it. Because they allowed themselves to get into a situation they were unable to maintain, they felt compelled to cause as much damage as possible before they left...The folks we got it from had done quite a bit of fix-it-up, but there's a whole bunch left to be done. Bad carpet. Damn near every interior door has a hole in it. A whole bunch of the shelving has been torn down - mind you, I didn't say taken down I said torn down as in there are big holes in many walls where shelves originally lived. There are also just holes in the walls for no apparent reason. One bedroom has had the window painted black with something that I can't seem to get off of it...well, here, look at a few pics...

  

This is the door to my closet. As you can see, the hole goes all the way through the door....

This is the door to my boy's bedroom...

The "painted" window. A side note here - my boy HATES this room. If the door is left even slightly ajar, he will pull it closed. Also the doorknob is "backwards," the lock is on the outside of the door. It's kinda creepy that not only was the window painted black, but the room was also set up to keep someone IN...

This is the floor around our water heater. We think it broke & flooded at some point, and the floor was left as it was. The kitchen light, directly below it was fixed, kinda...

I mean technically, it was fixed, but I'm not sure for how long....

 

And finally, our stained & "bubbled up" carpet - have you ever tried to vacuum carpet that isn't securely attached to the floor underneath it..? It's a bitch, lemme tell ya...

In addition to all this, we have had to repair the toilets - at our cost - three times, there is no water pressure in the downstairs of the home,

This is my kitchen faucet ON HIGH...

no screens on any of the windows, there isn't even a garage door opener installed...Now, understand, these things aren't in themselves our complaint. It was like this when we moved in, and we felt none of it made the house unlivable, and we were willing to deal with it for the reduced rent we were paying (although I really have trouble calling $800 a month reduced...). We were told if we made repairs, we could take it off the rent, as long as it wasn't a whole bunch all at once. Also good with that. Then it sold. The buyers assured us, sitting in our living room, while looking us in the eye, that they knew we wanted to stay here indefinitely - with purchase by us as the eventuality, they weren't going to raise the rent, we could make repairs & deduct from rent, and everything would stay the same. This is the delusion we've been living under...

When I took the rent check to their home, I included a letter requesting the lease renewal be done early so we didn't have to mess with it during the holidays, and requesting it be an extended lease, with our preference being a five year term. I my head, there should have been no problem, based on the conversation we had with them prior to this....Silly me.

Here's the response I got:  

i just wanted to let you know we recieved the payment and note from the mail box, Thank you.  We are in the process of working up a new lease, unfortunatly we cannot go into a 5 yr lease.  Also i need to put out there to you that the new monthly lease will be increasing from 800/mo to 925/mo.  While we appriciate you living there as the tenants and we can count on you to take care of the dwelling, we did buy this to be an investment property and we have checked around and rent is going for 300-400 more than what your paying now.  We were actually getting ready to contact you about the new lease info when we read your note.  We should have the new lease agreement typed up and ready for you to look over by this Sunday Nov 9, i can either drop it off or attach it to an email.  once you look it over, if you could just let us know what you decide by Nov 30.

(the spelling errors are theirs, I just copy/pasted it.)

Now, does that sound to you like someone who meant any of the statements made above...? Bearing in mind they haven't done anything to the house. Which is actually fine, I can live in it the way it is, but I'll be DAMNED if I'm paying MORE for it...What this email told me was:

a) Keeping us as tenants (never late on rent, making repairs at our own expense, etc.) wasn't even worth a phone call.
b) They are consummate liars, as we believed what they said
c) They really aren't concerned with keeping us as tenants at all, nor do they intend to sell us the house in the future as they had said they would, or why would there be a problem with an extended lease..?
d) We have to move, again. In December, again. No birthday party for my boy, again. Jacked up Christmas, again.

I stopped payment on the rent check. My self-preservation instincts are dominant in a situation like this...Apparently I need that money to move. And based on all the lies we had been told in the past, it was a safe bet we'd never get our deposit back (this has been since somewhat proven, as you'll see).

Yesterday, we contacted them to meet and see if we could come to terms. I had the money for the rent in my pocket, in cash. What it came to was they offered us $850 a month (I'm willing to do that). We asked for something in writing, (protecting us from him saying one thing & doing something else, again). He assured us he was going home to prepare the new lease. He would then email it to us, last night. We would sign it & I would bring a copy to them, along with the rent & the $10 fee their bank charged them for the stop payment. Good deal, we don't have to move! Silly me...

We hadn't been home half an hour when Hunny's phone rang. He couldn't get the agreement done as the Colts were coming on, and he didn't have time (?) But he'd have it done "sometime next week." Also, there was an NSF fee of $60 (again, huh?) that he wanted us to pay. Oh yeah, and we were supposed to either pay the rent then, without any form of surety, or we could pay $40 a day late fee until he completed the paperwork...

My Hunny had asked during that meeting if he was a man of his word, was his handshake good? and this man AGAIN looked us in the eye and lied to us. I told him I was willing to pay the rent, the $10 fee, and half of the NSF. I think that's fair. He was very adamant that they had no intention of making us feel that we were being forced to up the rent or get out. My opinion..? If that's true then you own equal responsibility for the fruits of your acts, and you can pay half your fee. I was willing to do that if he kept his word & provided us a new lease that evening. He called it blackmail, I called it keeping your word. Needless to say, it didn't go well. He proceeded to tell me he couldn't pay half the fee as he didn't have the $30 dollars....

Now that opens up a whole new world in my head...How come you didn't have the amount of a month's mortgage payment put back in that account, in case something happened..? Renters default on rent all the time. I sure as Hell would have - had the payment put back, not defaulted *grin*. And where's the money you're supposed to be returning to me as my deposit..? Shouldn't that be put in an untouched account, so it can be returned..? And once you found rent wasn't being paid you could use that to cover yourself if you didn't have the brains to have a payment at hand at all times...This is not the only rental property they have, and she works at a BANK  so they don't even have inexperience as an excuse for any of that.

And really, if I didn't have $30 dollars to pay half of an NSF fee, that I have to pay either way...and someone was offering me not only the other half of it, but another $810, why wouldn't someone with fully functioning brain cells accept it..? Hello..? You don't have $30, how are you going to make your house payment..? And if I choose to keep possession of the property until you evict me, how are you going to pay the next one, and the one after, not to mention pay for the eviction proceedings..?

Can I just say AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH !?!?!?!?

Anywho, ok, I've posted. LOL now I have to go get ready for work, going on very little sleep (I can't shut my brain down easily in normal conditions, the last few days, if the slightest thing wakes me in the night - and something always does - I'm awake for an hour with all this crap swirling around in my head...)

Ok gotta go,

See ya laterzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Oh Goodie! ! ! !

Well, aren't I the lucky one..? Now I get to fuc**ng MOVE again. We thought we were all good...when we rented the house we made it clear we didn't want to move anytime soon, the lady we rented from was all good with that. No problem, renewal is good, rent won't go up...then she sold the house. It seemed all was still good. We met with buyers, seemed like decent folk, basically, although quite honestly, I didn't trust her as far as I could throw her, but hey, what could I do? She now owned my house.
We should've known it wouldn't be quite so good when we tried to get back the money we had spent to put screens in a couple of the windows, since none of the windows had screens when we moved in. Now mind you I'm not talking hundreds of dollars - we're talking about $30. Like pulling teeth. Nevermind they had indicated in our initial meeting that they were going to a) replace the nasty carpet, b) fix all the holes in the walls, c) replace all the interior doors that likewise have holes in them, d) replace the board over the garage door that is rotting away, etc., etc., etc. Guess how many of those things they've done..? You got it - not a one! Yet they want to raise the rent. Mind - I had expected it to go up a bit - maybe $50 a month - even $75, but $125..? No, I don't think so. If they had replaced the carpet through out, yeah, ok. Replaced the doors with holes in them, sure. But having done nothing to the place..? Not happening. So we get to move. Again. I HATE moving.
Grrrrrrrrrrrr........
I swear I just can't win for losing! Ever! For any reason! And I'm about over it! Every time I start to think it might - just maybe - be getting better, BAM here we go again! You know, I try to be a good person. I don't abuse children or elderly people. I don't talk bad about people behind their backs & pretend to be their friend to their face. I help people in need, whenever I can. I have come a long ways in controlling my attitude & my angry impulses and tendencies to leap before I look...usually ON someone. I rarely drink. I don't do drugs that aren't prescribed to me. I don't lie. Ever. About ANYTHING. I don't steal. So, WTF..? Why is it that no matter how I try, I get royally skewered everytime I turn around?
I guess if I didn't know people who deserve to be skewered, and aren't it wouldn't be so bad...oh well, no point snivelling. I'm just so tired. Not just tired so much as tired of...
Well back to work.
See ya laterzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!