As I’m sure you’re aware, we live in a slightly (to moderately) dodgy 2 bedroom apartment whilst we save money for a house deposit. Houses are expensive down under. Anyway, whenever something needs fixing, it takes ages and sometimes threatening emails (threatening to call emergency plumbers and so forth and then make the owners foot the bill, not threatening their person or anything like that. That’s not how I roll) to make anything happen. The door of one of the cupboards in the kitchen fell off when we first moved in, and that’s yet to be fixed. But that’s not really a must fix, so it doesn’t bother me too much. It’s just kind of annoying.
Let me just clarify: It’s not the real estate agent who manages the apartment that is the problem, she tells the owners whenever a problem arises (or so I’m led to believe), it’s the owners who just don’t bother to do anything. They prefer “fixing” things themselves and I don’t know, maybe they just can’t be bothered or something. Maybe I need a cattle prod. Then when they do come, they just show up. No phone call, no appointment. They just show up. Once they came when I was sick, hadn’t showered, and was laying around on the couch in nothing but my fuzzy pink bathrobe. Awesome. You can read about that here and here.
Why am I telling you this? Because we have another problem. Sigh. Our bedroom door won’t shut. And the tap in the bathroom doesn’t turn off properly. So I wrote the estate agent another email. Seriously, this is word for word, I copied and pasted this bad boy straight from my sent box (including the illustration):
Hi Taryn,
I know it’s hard to get the owners of the apartment to actually fix anything (please don’t forward this email to them…), but it’s been about a month since the last inspection where I showed what’s-her-name the problems of the apartment. And I haven’t heard a peep about when they will be fixed.
In case she didn’t tell you, the door to Aaron’s and my bedroom is broken. Well, not so much the door as the little thing that comes out of the side of the door to actually keep the door shut. I’m not sure what it’s called. Anyway, our bedroom door is missing this little thing because it decided that it did not want to retract when we turned the door handle to let us into our bedroom. We were locked out. I do quite like sleeping in my bed rather than the couch, so Aaron got out his tools and took the whole door handle off, along with the little thing that latches the door. He discovered that the little thing, let’s call it Bob to make things easier, was in fact broken.
So Aaron put the door handle back on, sans Bob, and now we can’t shut our door.
That may seem like no big deal, but we have 2 small children, one of whom thinks it’s absolutely essential to taste everything he comes across. And by taste, I mean shoves in his mouth. He also enjoys pulling everything possible off shelves King Kong style and making a giant mess. He’s cheeky, what can I say.
We have over 100 board games in our bedroom, so you can imagine the chaos that said child creates when he enters our room. Which is easy because the door won’t shut. Plus most of the games have tiny parts, which, as I pointed out, he enjoys putting in his mouth. He did once choke on a sticker and
I had to call an ambulance, so I’m a little petrified of what may happen should he decide to attempt ingestion of board game pieces. Please see the attached illustration.
When he gets into the board games, he does that smile that is so big he has to close his eyes to accomodate his pudgy cheeks.
We have been pulling a big oil fin heater in front of the door to block Daniel from entering our room, but the cheeky monkey has recently discovered that he can make like a battering ram and force his way in. This is obviously quite a problem for us.
Furthermore, the cold tap in the bathroom is getting worse. I know the owners know about that one because one of them said he’d come back to fix it months ago, but you know how that goes….
Now when we go to turn it off, a little trickle keeps coming out. We have to turn it on full boar, then turn it off again whilst it makes noises resembling a dying whale. Sometimes it turns all the way off then, but other times we have to repeat the process up to 5 times. That could be just an annoyance, but Hannah has recently learned how to turn the tap on to wash her own hands. She can also open the door all by herself. So sometimes she goes in there, does her business, washes her hands, can’t turn the tap off because it’s crap, and then comes back out. I’m none the wiser that she’s even been in the bathroom and the tap is trickling water for hours before I notice.
Lucky for me I don’t pay the water bill…. And I’m not going to pay for excess water either. Not when the owners know about the crap tap.
Anyway, if you could maybe give the owners a little please-fix-stuff-in-the-apartment kick up the backside, that would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Sheri
We’ll see what sort of response this gets. I’ll keep you posted.
UPDATE: I only sent the email yesterday at nearly 5pm, and I’ve already received a response AND the owners called and arranged a time to come and fix stuff. Booyah. See, amusing emails are far better than mean ones. As Taryn wrote back “I always enjoy reading your emails, and now they come with illustrations too! Haha.” I’m glad she has a sense of humour because I can imagine that a lot of estate agents would find that sort of email obnoxious and get their noses all out of joint.
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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson
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Tags: board games, dodgy apartment, email, landlord, life, real estate agent, toddler gets into board games
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