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The Move from Hell - The Story of My Past Two Months
🕑 Added 2020-06-20 10:23:02 +0000 UTCLast time I checked, the name 'divine comedy' was already in use, which is a bit of a shame considering I couldn't think of a more appropriate combination of two words to describe the past month; a close second being "big fuck". I thought I had made it abundantly clear personally, but given that daily I am still inundated with questions along the lines of "Where is the CK2 series?", "Where is Rimworld?" maybe it's best to broach the topic fairly early for those of you living in Patrick Star's basement - I've been moving house.
Perhaps calling it moving house is a little bit generous. At this point, it's devolved into me moving the universe around me out of pure hatred and frustration at landlords and letting agencies who were only put on this here godly earth to torment me, plucked fresh from the bowels of hell itself. Divine Comedy would be a bit more appropriate in hindsight.
Anyway, I'll start from the top and work forward to yesterday where things truly peaked.
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Firstly, there's a small matter of an economy crushing global pandemic, which might be safe to assume was sent only to spite me at this stage, given the universe's will to separate me from anywhere with a functioning roof. Thanks to COVID we weren't allowed to view any houses at all, this was back in April-May time when the virus was in full swing, slide, and roundabout.
No viewings meant fewer contracts being signed, fewer contracts meant fewer agencies open to handle them, which meant rent prices going up to try and take the brunt of the losses. The price on our old flat went up 10% - normally it goes up 2.5% in line with interest rates, but given that interest rate in the UK is currently at 0.1%, I can only assume the landlord misplaced the decimal point because landlords have surely never done anything spiteful or vindictive and put human suffering over their own greed.
Now the price increase did fall in line with our contract ending, so it was perfectly above board, but given the circumstances and that it would have been, and almost was, impossible to find a new place, the landlord had us hook, line, and sinker. Now it was always a backup plan, taking the expense and sitting around in a crappy house where we didn't even have room for a bed. I wasn't joking all those times I said I slept on the floor, I really did. So staying was a very definite final resort.
29 emails and 14 calls were made to landlords and letting agencies to try and find a property, somewhere, out there in the wilderness. A couple of weeks went by with no responses, or a small amount of back and forth followed by a "You do WHAT for a job? No, we can't accept you I'm afraid" then straight back to square one. All hope was lost, a combination of terribly selfish pandemic timing and thoroughly millennial job had shot down any chance of a new place.
It was on the day I was about to sign up for the paying 10% more on my back pain that a biblical light shone in the darkness in the form of a private estate agent.
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A property offer. More expensive than I was willing, and really able, to pay but at this point desperation was the biggest player in this sick cosmic game, and the monetary dregs Youtube scoop up and launch at me, like the filthy chimps they are, were going to recover eventually, so I fired back an email at worrying speeds and next thing I know we were in negotiations. IDs and documents were exchanged, talk of payment was being discussed, virtual tours were forwarded. We'd finally done it, a house, with a REAL bed.
I notified my current letting agency and told them I didn't want to renew the contract because the gold mines they assume I operate had run dry, and the house we were living in for three years was put up for rent again. No "hey thanks for being a good tenant, we'll keep the price the same" no discussions, no attempts to keep up, just a reminder to drop off the keys and that was it.
Ultimately, it didn't matter, we had a new, bigger house for slightly more than the extra 10% the current place was going to have, seems like a fair deal? That was until an email popped rather unceremoniously into my inbox - "Sorry, the property you wanted has been rented out, good luck on your search!"
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"Fuck", I thought, and possibly also screamed like a banshee but you can't prove that so your noise complaint will never get off the ground. The house that I thought was secure most certainly was not, and now I'd just confirmed the cancellation of our current contract with no way of returning to it.
And this was the point where I almost was homeless.
Hilarious funny haha jokes aside, I rang my parents immediately and told them to clear out their spare bedroom because that's how desperate things had gotten. I was actually two weeks away from being on the streets and my only solution was to move in with my parents over 200 miles away. I was looking at getting rid of all of our furniture, save our PCs and whatever we could fit in a car.
We actually did get rid of cabinets, sofas, a perfectly good tumble-dryer. You don't need those on the cold, hard streets, just the skills to survive, oh! And a bindle, all homeless people need a bindle. In a last-ditch attempt, I used a renting website to send a mass email inquiry to every rent-able property in a 2-mile radius. One bedroom, four-bedroom, cheap, expensive, who cares? Even with rent double what were paying it would still be more cost-effective than getting rid of all my things. I can just lick the garden moss for sustenance, food is overrated anyway.
We got the usual emails back from robots telling us that apparently there was something called COVID and that the offices were closed? Not entirely sure what they were talking about, but you'd think we'd have possibly heard of a mass virus resulting in total lockdown from somewhere other than a letting agency's answering machine, as if anyone emailing at that point weren't doing it out of complete desperation. Morons.
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With one week and five days remaining before had to start moving, I received a single lone email. A house was available, bigger than what we wanted, more expensive including the 10% rent hike, and over the other side of town, but what could we do? I basically snapped their arm off and pursued it relentlessly.
Now to say that this Letting Agency was maybe the worst Letting Agency in existence would be an understatement. Their website has a timer on it, I assume to cause undue amounts of stress and terror in the worthless worms who dare rent in this modern world. HOW DARE YOU EAT AVOCADO TOAST, YOU UNWASHED FILTH. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU NEED TO WEAR CLOTHES? JUST WORK A THIRD JOB.
We submitted all of our documents within the first 30 minutes of having access to their website, with big red crosses by the landlord and letting agencies tasks, and big green ticks near ours. A day went by, still the same red crosses by the landlord and agency, so I called and sent more emails. Another day, same red crosses, more calls and emails. We still had to complete our background referencing checks, because apparently saying "I haven't been to prison because of my debt" isn't enough for some people, and time was quite literally running out, both on their patented depression simulation timer.com and our imminent eviction.
Then, at long last, the hour went by and the time was up. We opened the website, and there it was; "One hour remaining". Turns out that one hour minus one hour is still one hour. Now I understand why it's so difficult to get hold of estate agencies, they quite clearly exist on a different plane of reality where time is linear for everyone except them. It turns out, after some interrogation, the timer was paused because the landlord made some mistakes with the documentation that needed correction. A luxury I'm sure would have been extended to us, the unwashed masses, if we had the same problem. It was now a day before the move-in date on our contract.
Despite the big red cross still being there, we were assured that everything is fine. Except, it most certainly was not fine - they hadn't taken payment for deposit, rent, fees, anything. We were expected to move into a house we hadn't even paid for, and I had to decide whether or not to take the plunge and arrange for our internet to be installed in the new place, and get a moving company booked, when, again, I hadn't even paid for the damn house.
It was the morning of the move and I got a phone call. It was a lady demanding money from me down the phone, "Strange" I thought, "Elise is still asleep, who could this person on the phone be?". It was the Letting Agency finally calling to collect the deposit for a house I was due to move into in a few hours. Better late than never. I paid it, everything was confirmed, and just as I was about to hang up I was cut off by the voice from the other end of the phone saying "By the way, the keys are in the garden. Enjoy your new house!" The keys were in what? A peculiar arrangement, but maybe they're doing it that way because of the virus, and the office is closed. This way, in the words of the great Fred Durst, there's no human contact.
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Now for those of you not blinded by desperation and madness, there's probably some red flags. Some alarm bells. A nuclear siren. Why out of nearly 50 emails did this one actually respond? Why was the Letting Agency so coy? And the Landlord so slow to take our money when normally they're circling overhead at the whiff of a MasterCard? Why in god's name were the keys in the garden? We unlocked the house and stepped in the front door.
The first thing of note was the smell, it was as if someone cleaned a retirement home with a vat of acid and used the retirees as a mop. Pure, unadulterated, concentrated, old people smell. For those of you that know, you know, but for those of you who don't, when ants are dying they release a pheromone to attract other ants, for defence or as a warning, and I'm certain old people do the same, except to attract the Grim Reaper. It's an empty house, they smell right? Could be the wood, could be the repairs. Or it could be something more sinister.
As we made our way around for our first viewing, with no chance of pulling out, we came across some very, very, interesting things. Firstly, the house was supposed to be unfurnished, yet it was fully furnished. Fridge freezers, microwaves, beds, wardrobes, drawers, and even old, mouldy cutlery. As if the previous tenants had been abducted during dinner. In the master bedroom, some of the skirting board had been pulled clean off, throwing debris across what was assured to be a "new carpet". In one of the bedrooms was a muddy footprint. Not a boot print, not a shoe print, a muddy footprint with full toeage.
In the same room was a mattress with a hole cut in the end of it, either used for storing drugs, which we genuinely think is the case given the empty bag inside, or for fucking, which strangely enough I tell myself to make the situation a little more humourous, and you know it's a bad situation when convincing yourself that one of the beds in your new house has been fucked is the best solution.
I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say, it was a fucking mess. I feel like I need to coin the phrase "Rental Cleaning Paradox" because it's strange how in every house I've rented they've always taken some of the deposit as a "cleaning fee" yet all the houses I've moved into have been a complete dump. I was pretty furious at this stage. I called the lettings agency and spoke very loudly at them until I got the landlords number who I then spoke very loudly too until he agreed to move the furniture. After all, one of the benefits to moving into a more expensive house is that I don't have to throw away all of my stuff - that was no longer true given that the unfurnished house was well and truly furnished.
I delayed the moving company as long as I could, to try and give the landlord time to clear the crap out of the house. The kitchen was the first thing tidied; the mouldy cutlery, the old microwave, and a kettle, which I can only assume was used to boil piss considering the state of it, were all removed. Next came the big furniture, one of the wardrobes was removed, then someone came to collect a bed with the used mattress for reasons I can't quite fathom. At this stage, about a third of the furniture we needed to be removed was removed.
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That's when the proverbial cherry on the pure faecal cake was delivered. A message from the landlord simply saying "Look at how easy the furniture is being removed, can I get you to sell the rest of the furniture on Facebook for me and arrange it's removal." I verbally said "What the fuck?", Elise said "What the fuck?", I showed it to my friends back home who also said: "What the fuck?". The landlord, to make up for his or the letting agencies mistakes, wants me to take the time and effort sell his disgusting second-hand fucking furniture and then give him the money?
Suffice to say, I got back in touch with the landlord. I might have lost my temper and said a naughty word but eventually, he relented and the rest of the furniture was removed. I made the repairs myself because I thought I can either wait 4 weeks living in squalor for the landlord to pay someone to come in and repair the damages, or I can buy some supplies and fix it myself in a couple of hours.
The only pleasant part of the whole ordeal was the moving company, who were fast as lightning. They absolutely everything moved out of our old property and into the new one in less than 2 hours. I made a point of tipping them well because at that point they were the only sensible and diligent people in a landslide of incompetence.
So the house is repaired and cleaned, the cursed furniture is gone and our furniture is in. This is where the story ends, and we all lived happily ever after with me only having missed SINGLE (One (1)) day of uploading because we quite literally did not have internet here.
Yeah, no.
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We still had a pretty hefty deposit hanging over the other property, and given that we were paying more than we wanted for this place, plus all the miscellaneous costs of fixing this place, and ultimately, I wanted a new bed with a fucking good mattress, I was willing to move heaven and earth to get that deposit back.
Yesterday, we went to the local DIY store, bought some paint and paint rollers, along with anything else to fix the house back up to perfect condition and headed back over to the old house while we still had the keys. We made the trek from one side of the city to the other, with cleaning supplies in tow. We got into the house and decided before we made a start to get some breakfast and some drinks because we were in it for the long haul, we left the cleaning stuff at the old house and went to the shop quickly and came straight back, only to be stopped at the front door.
The keys didn't work. Weird, we'd just gone in a second ago. We tried both keys in both locks and nothing was opening. It's then I realised I'd picked up the spare set of keys on the way out that don't have the one key we need to get back in and all of our stuff was in there. No big deal, the letting agency which was all of a five-minute walk away, had a managerial set of keys, I'll just get those. I walked over they were more than happy to help us out, after all, they definitely had a set of keys because I gave them a new set myself only a couple of months previously and had them sign for them.
Five minutes passed, then ten minutes, then a solemn-looking receptionist came back and told me that no, no they did not have the keys.
I had to call a locksmith. Two hours later, £80 down the drain, and 2 hours wasted, we were defeated.
So today I'm going to paint a house.
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So that is the ongoing tale of my life in the past two months. I wish I could say it was hyped up or dramatised, but honestly, it really isn't at all. Many of you over in the discord can attest to this as on more than one occasion I've shared some of the hilarious and not at all life-shortening misgivings of this move.
To really compound things, there were also some things I left out related to family issues that also happened during this time. My birthday also happened in the past week that we completely forgot about until my parents called me to ask if I had a nice day.
The whole thing has been a mess.
I'm planning on getting at least a week of regularly scheduled content going again, then I'm going to take a day off just to scream and hopefully sleep on a god damn bed for the first time in a year.
So, in conclusion; Apologies for the delay in the content, this wasn't meant as an excuse but more as an explanation to why I missed a day of content last week, and I've only been doing one or two videos a day.
And as always, thank you for the continued support, especially during times like these where you guys are missing out on content due to circumstances well and truly outside of all of our hands. The kindness and outpouring of support has genuinely been a morale booster like no other. I hope now, with my own office, eventually a new bed to sleep on, and once the dust is settled, not only can we get back to the regular content but it might end up just being better than ever before.
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Landlords to Deposit Agencies.
Sam
Mr Streamer
Roll1D2 Games
