»11th August 2006
Rent Me? Please?
Since it has been over a month since I picked up the keys to our new flat with Stewart only to find the keycards didn't seem to work, it was high time that we made our second expedition into Leeds to confront the evildoers at Rent Me Properties, our inept tormentors. Just to make sure that the keys didn't work we met up at the flat first, the door to the building itself was left ajar, guess I needn't worry about not being burgled. After this first security feature was circumvented we approached the door to Flat Four, which is probably ours, we're not entirely sure because Rent Me didn't feel the need to give us copies of our contracts or any information directly related to our flat, I don't even know our postcode. For some reason none of the lights in the corridor worked, so we couldn't see a damn thing, keycards were prodded in the general direction of the door to no avail, after a few minutes of confusion in the dark I cracked out the flash on my phone, making me feel like Gandalf when the fellowship got lost in the mines of Moria. The feeling of being like Gandalf was sadly only mild and fleeting.
I somehow managed to open the flat door on the first attempt, what a fluke.
Success! A green light on the lock! One of the keys seemed to have magically started working since we last tried. We had a look round the flat, which seemed in pretty decent condition, strangely the water, electric and gas was already working, as far as I knew we had to get that connected or at least sort something out with the service companies. However, we tried the keys again and found they didn't work, so either I accidentally entered the keys in the correct way (I'm thinking the magic light of Gan my phone had something to do with it) or the lock is fucked as we originally suspected.
Armed with the knowledge that we definitely had the right keys for the right lock for the right flat and that Rent Me couldn't blame us for fucking things up, we headed off to the office to sort things out. When we arrived at the office three girls were in the middle of a heated discussion with the guy in the office, who for the sake of convenience we'll call Fredo (I'll explain later), about how they had been given two weeks to get out of their property, how they couldn't afford to cover the rent for the empty fourth room and how they hadn't recieved some letter from their old landlord who must have sold the property to Rent Me or something. The girl doing the talking was quite annoyed about the whole affair and Fredo was doing his best to convince her he was doing his best, that it's their old landlord's fault and that she really wouldn't need to get her dad to get the solicitor's in on the Rent Me legal team. This of course didn't fill me with confidence that Rent Me gave a flying fuck about their tennants. After Fredo had finished mumbling and settled the girls down he assured the girls that he was going to sort things out and sent them on their not-so-merry way.
I explained to Fredo how we couldn't get into our flat because of the faulty lock.
Finally it was our turn to explain our woes to Fredo in the hope he'd do something about the whole not-being-able-to-get-into-our-flat-which-we've-paid-rent-for situation. Whilst explaining our problems with the keys Fredo put on his best concerned face. First off he gave us some handy tips and advice on our keys and the lock on the door. This is priceless and deserves bullet points.
Fredo got the MP3 players for us, without even checking if we'd won them.
Anyway, after Fredo's sage advice on the mysteries of the magnetic keycards, he said he'd ring up a guy called 'Eric' to come down and- now he wasn't very clear here- either fix the existing lock, by replacing the battery or install a regular key lock as Rent Me were supposed to be doing across the whole flat complex. He said if we walked back to the flat and waited for him he'd put the new lock in there and then and give us the keys. Before we left the office we reminded Fredo that we were supposed to have found our MP3 players from the wheel of fortune left for us in the flat. Fredo promptly went downstairs and came up with three MP3 players which were disappointingly similar to the cheapo MP3 player I already have. He handed out the MP3 players to Stewart, Stewart's sister (tagging along to have a look round the flat) and myself, despite seemingly having not bothered to check if we had indeed won the MP3s on the Wheel of Misfortune (see Blog 31st May 2006) or even if we were all even tenants of the property. I hope Fredo didn't bother to write down if we'd picked up the players, I might be able to get another free player from Rent Me otherwise. So, with MP3s in hand we set off back to the flat, this is where things got really stupid.
We spent a lot of time walking around Leeds.
We got back to the flat, and surprise, surprise, 'Eric' wasn't there, we waited around for about half an hour and still no sign of the mysterious lock master. In this time we became very suspicious of Fredo, he didn't strike you as someone who either knew very much or cared very much, especially seeing as he stood us up presumably just to get us out of the office. Stewart likened our vaguely italian looking friend at Rent Me to the relation of the family in gangster films who is pretty inept but is nonetheless given responsibility, just like Fredo Corleone. And we all know what happened to Fredo on the lake in his fishing boat.
Fredo had gone fishing when we rang the office back.
Fredo's plan for getting us into our flat has a few fairly obvious holes. Firstly, it'd take this Eric guy a while to put this new lock on, and it's not like we can wait in the flat, we can't guarantee that the lock would let us in. Secondly, if Eric just gave us the keys, Rent Me wouldn't have any way of knowing how many keys there were or who had been given keys, which could put us in the shit in the event of a burglary or when we had to hand the keys back in at the end of the tennancy. Thirdly, this Eric guy must either be a really conscientious guy to drop whatever he was doing at the time to come over to our flat to help us get in or an idle layabout who Rent Me don't check up on often enough, I mean he just sounds like a dodgy white van clown to me, that's all.
We waited for half an hour outside the flat for 'Eric' but he never came.
We were getting pretty frustrated now, so we gave Rent Me a ring. No prizes for guessing Fredo wasn't available. The woman on the other end of the phone said she'd ring this Eric guy and said that we'd be able to pick up the keys from the office some time in the future she didn't feel at liberty to dislose. This suggests that Fredo didn't bother ringing Eric and that Rent Me don't really care that we can't actually get into our flat.
I was very angry with Fredo when I found out he had betrayed me.
What have we learnt from this episode of Rent Me disorganisation? Rent Me sucks, our flat looks pretty good, but we can't get into it, Fredo is a lying, disorganised bastard and the that the Civil War was initially a war to preserve the union but became a war to end slavery.
A good start to the essay, a strong introduction. Structure and paragraphing needs more thought. A deeper discussion on the role of Lincoln in shaping the aims of the Union in the war and of public opinion towards the South. Good effort. 59
Extar, over, out.
TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!