»5th September 2006

Victory?

More tales of Rent Me woes? Yep. Well it's not like I've got anything better to be doing than wasting my time with the Rent Boy clowns who think good business practice is charging £700 rent for a locked door and three useless keycards over the summer. This excerpt from the email I sent to Rent Me last week, which of course got no reply, should bring you up to speed on things.
"We are starting to get very annoyed with the fact that we can't get into our flat because the keycard lock doesn't work and the fact that the flat isn't in the condition we were told it would be in before we signed up. With university starting up again in a few weeks it is very important that we can move into the flat as soon as possible."
That's right, 'we are starting to get very annoyed', as if that isn't just a slight understatement.



Above is a picture of what victory against Rent Me looks like, it smells quite strongly of napalm. You guessed it (with the aid of past knowledge and photographic evidence!) I've finally got hold of working keys for the new lock on the door of my flat, which was supposed to have been fitted over two months ago! Suddenly my victory is seeming very hollow. It's taken two months to get fucking keys for my flat? I've been paying for that?
How foolish I was! Confidently striding into the Rent Me office thinking I'd won, no wonder the girl was so polite and helpful when I said I was there to pick up the keys, I was walking into their trap!

"In order to cause the enemy to come of their own volition, extend some [apparent] profit."

"Accordingly, subjugate the feudal lords with potential harm; labour the feudal lords with numerous affairs; and have the feudal lords race after profit"

- Sun Tzu


Now that I had all three keys I could finally get into my flat without the aid of several workmen IDKFA!

I arrived at the flat and thankfully the new yale lock and keys all seemed to work. However, I was immediately greeted inside the flat with wood shavings, assorted tools and the old Uniqey lock left on the floor, the workmen had obviously not done any work on the flat since I seen them start to disassemble the old lock when I was at the flat two weeks ago. It was clear that I had not yet defeated Rent Me and that they think that I am satisfied with finally getting my hands on the keys to my flat after two months. A quick scan around the flat revealed that the workmen had not done any of the refurbishment yet, I was getting annoyed again. I had a really good look around the flat and despite it being in a superficially decent condition (apart from the old sofas) I started noticing bits of crumbly ceiling in one of the bathrooms- suggesting leaking pipes in the past, creaking and broken bed-frames and wobbly toilets.


My phone camera is really bad, that's supposed to be showing the hole in one of the bathroom ceilings.

The beds in the rooms have strange metal frames which are screwed down to the floor and can be folded up, quite why anyone would want to fold up their bed against the wall is beyond me, I mean all the bedding would just fall off and you'd only have to bring them back down when you wanted to go to sleep anyway. These bizarre bed frames are, consequently, all broken. The fixed legs closest to the wall (the other two legs fold away for if you wanted to fold the bed up) are all broke, meaning the beds are weakly supported and now leaning against the walls. They can't really be safely folded up and generally feel as though they may collapse if you lie down too hard on them or try to adjust them because the matress slants and you kind of end up rolling off.
The bathroom fittings are equally shoddy, I am now the proud owner of a toilet which worryingly rocks from side to side when you sit down on it. It goes without saying that Rent Me weren't being very truthful or realistic when they said that they were just finishing the refurbishment of the flats when we were shown around the show flat back in what? May? And they haven't even started refurbishing our flat? It must take a REALLY long time to tidy up some plastering, replace some beds and sofas and properly screw down some fucking toilet fittings.
I almost forgot to mention that the placement of the plugs in the rooms is fucking dire. Each room has a woefully inadequate four plugs. Two conveniently placed behind the fixed beds, and another two placed in the leg space of the fitted desk wardrobes. I had already brought a few things to my flat just to get a fucking foot-hold in the place in case Rent Me tried to deny I was even a tennant or something. So, whilst I was in the flat I figured I might as well unpack some of the things from the two carry-alls I had now put in the room I picked. The handy and convenient plug placement meant I could put my alarm clock underneath my bed and my desk lamp, again, conveniently underneath my desk, how fantastic!


The workmen are very messy, I shouldn't have to clean all that shit up.

I could settle with how the plugs represented yet another 'fuck you' from Rent Me. I could perhaps even settle for the fact that the workmen left all that mess in the doorway. But I really can't settle with the fact that Rent Me have rented out a flat which really is in quite desperate need of refurbishment, I mean those beds really do strike me as quite dangerous. The three keys did represent a small victory I suppose. I can't really see what Rent Me could do to further fuck things up on the getting-into-the-flat front. So at least I can draw a line under the lock campaign and redistribute my forces to the flat-falling-apart and I-want-my-rent-back-you-fuckos campaigns.

Looks, like the villainous Rent Me isn't going to go down without a fight!

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!