Week 21 - Hanging around and trying not to get angry

Leaving Dubai is not a happy experience, neither was our arrival. Customer service here isn't the best. Comments from people are to just pay someone, but I have little faith in anyone here, I still haven't had the paperwork from our shipping company or any paperwork at all to say they have our furniture. I had to sign forms, they didn't give me copies. 

We cancelled the internet services and were informed to take the boxes to a local store, on arrival we were shouted at by the meet and greeter and told we were not to drop boxes there and that was that. Boxes were left at the front of the shop and when I tried to take a photo of them in front of the shop sign, I was shouted at again. Peter phoned customer services who again told us to go back to that branch for the final bill, but when we arrived we were told we'd been given the wrong advice and to go to head office. We almost said 'sod it' let them keep the deposit, but we went to make sure everything was closed and we discovered we owed a small sum.

Leaving our Villas has been very unpleasant. The check out form was pre printed with damage and costs to charge us with. This company isn't part of our landlords company, so we've taken the issue upo directly with them. The cost of repairs is the same amount as the deposit. We have an agreement with check in that due to settlement cracks we don't have to repaint when we vacate, but we were billed for that and a clean, which is mad as they made a right mess walking through today with sand blowing in through open doors, let alone the mess they make just to service the air con units. No allowance was made for wear and tear and two air con covers were broken in front of us as well as stating that the front door needs polishing as it is damaged from the sun.

Closing the electricity and water was really easy, done online, final bill sent and credit refunded to our bank account within 3 working days. Great service.

142 Saturday Woke with a migraine. Final check of the Villa, put the fridge and oven back together and all the filters for appliances that we'd cleaned. We dropped off the TV boxes as requested, collected a cheque and closed our electricity and water account, then off to drop a gift with a friend which led to a 3 hour brunch and an afternoon/evening lounging on the sofa watching TV.

We bought this cushion pad when we first moved to Dubai so we had something to sit on

143 Sunday Handed the keys in for the Villa, Peter went off to work and I caught the train back to the apartment. Unexpected firework show on the Palm

144 Monday Check out inspection of the villa, not happy at all. I had my hair cut and a gel manicure, Peter worked from the apartment. Afternoon spent sending emails and providing evidence to get our deposit back. 

145 Tuesday A day of blogging, commenting, walking and drinking coffee. Way too hot to be outside for any length of time, but the advantage of being where we are is I can access everything in a short distance. Spent some time on the beach and went for a swim.

I had gifts for my friends in South Africa that Peter brought over from the UK in February 2020 to take to SA in March. Finally dropped them at a friends sister who lives here and will take them over to SA when she is next allowed to visit.

146 Wednesday I walked down to the beach, the walkway is really rough and the public beach is covered in litter so I walked a little further had a swim, then cut through along a path back to the main road. Except I wasn't on a public path and was barked at to go back on the beach. it was 41c, I said I was lost, sorry but no not good enough, so I said call the police because I ain't going back on the beach and I was escorted through the car park. Really pissed off with this attitude from people in all services here, such job worths. Made a formal complaint to the hotel. Put do not enter signs up then if you're that worried about being invaded.

Peter keeps locking the balcony door, we're on the 32nd floor, no one will be breaking in here.

147 Thursday We popped out for a coffee, I spent most of the day reading and when Peter came home from work we went down to the pool. It was Peter's leaving do, 35 years with the company, 6 of them in Dubai, he's retiring. I enjoyed the evening, it was nice catching up with old faces via conference calls from South Africa, the UK and across Europe. 

Mask wearing outside is almost unbearable, so humid.

148 Friday Last day with the car so we went to Dubai Mall for breakfast, realised the weather wasn't too hot and had no reason to be in the Mall so we went for a drive along the Palm to take before, during and after photos for my construction photography blog posts. We went down to the pool early evening.

I love visiting aquariums, this photo was taken in Dubai Mall.

This weeks blog post really doesn't describe or sum up how we have both felt this week. It's been very emotional and challenging. I've been very pissed off by some comments from people on social media who I know would struggle doing half the stuff we do and have felt a few others have tried to catch me out, whilst many who would normally have an input just haven't bothered. Peter and I are certainly reducing our circle of friends through choice now and wondering why we didn't do this a long time ago.

On the blog this week:

Someones pet cat escaped - Exotic animal on the loose in Dubai

PoCoLo - Hanging around Dubai

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The real cost of renting, lettings agents and The Deposit Protection Scheme

Before I start I would like to point out that for the previous 9 years we've been tenants abroad in South Africa and Dubai and we're on the verge of moving into our 5th rental property.

We are also landlords, we've been renting out our family home in England, until recently. We are also renting out a one bed flat in South Wales.

The last tenants, although not as bad as the first set and did vacate earlier than requested have not looked after our property at all, despite having a list of demands for things to be fixed, repaired and redecorated before they moved in, which we did willingly.

We received £716.99 back from the tenants deposit of £1,462.50, the cost of repairs claimed for was £1,820.08. Having read the report of the findings from the DPS, it is clear that there was lack of evidence in the form of quotes, dated photos and itemised repairs, damages etc. I'm very disappointed with the rental agents and could have and would have done a better job myself of submitting evidence had I not relied on the agents to do their job in my best interests. For example it is deemed acceptable for this door to have been repaired.

The rubbish removal wasn't listed with evidence of the individual items

An award of £300 was made for redecoration costs and as it wasn't stated at the time of the tenancy that the house had been freshly dated it was deemed acceptable wear and tear. Paint alone for the radiators, woodwork and walls was £100 and labour £15 an hour. The DPS consider a patch job good enough. 

There was an award of £40 for this carpet to be cleaned, it won't clean and now it has to be replaced

Despite tenants cleaning the property in between, we've redecorated, re carpted a room, replaced appliances, repaired fence panels, dry cleaned curtains. Paid for all repairs, unless caused by the tenant, had a new shower tray installed, fixed outside taps and lights, had new taps for the kitchen and downstairs loo, a new oven and hob installed, serviced and installed a new boiler during the the snow storm of 2018 and gave the tenants money to buy portable heaters to keep warm and had the cheek to take the heaters I paid for. They also had a list of demands that we rectified prior to thier tenancy commencing and they leave our home like this?

You can read about the problems we've had and see the photos by clicking here. There are links within that post.

Would you be happy renting a property that was offered in this condition? Our previous tenants weren't. Yet look how they left it.

I'd love to hear about your experiences as a tenant and/or a landlord. The good, the bad or the ugly.

8 important questions to ask when booking car hire

We've often used a family members car when we've visited the UK, but as we usually fly into Heathrow or more often Birmingham, it's one heck of a trip getting to South Wales or Bath to collect the vehicle and with family and friends living all over the UK, it's been easier on our last few trips to book car hire.

We've used one of the larger search engines to find the best deals, but there have been a few hiccups and often the place where we've had to collect the car from has involved a train, bus trip or walk to reach it. Service has often been slow and poor and not fun when you've just got off a long haul flight, lugging a 30kg suitcase and hand luggage.

On both the last two occasions, when we returned the vehicles there was some minor damage to the paint work, scuff marks and stone chips.

We took out Collision Waiver Damage, CWD, which almost doubled the initial costs advertised on the website with the booking company.

CWD means that any accident, theft or damage to the vehicle is covered fully, but it also means you lose your deposit to the actual car hire company and then you have to provide receipts which you forward to the booking company for a full refund.

Having your car hire and insurance with different companies worked well for us the first time and the £400 deposit was returned to our credit card before the payment was due.

However on the last trip, the deposit was £1200 and was retained by the car hire company, for 2 stone chips and a scuff mark that could've easily T cut out had I had the car cleaned before returning it. Receipts were forwarded as before, but this time I waited 3 months before the deposit was refunded, meaning I had to pay the credit card bill off in full. I only got my deposit returned after I threatened the booking company with the ombudsman. The delay was due to the car hire company not providing evidence of the cost of repairs, meaning I had to wait for them to refund the difference between the repairs and the deposit then the booking company refunding the cost of the repairs.

As a result and the difficulties in sorting things like this out from another country, I've decided to investigate booking direct, with everything in one place. The car hire and the insurance together is almost double the price of booking with one of the low cost companies, but the excess is very high and to reduce it to £0 the cost of hire, the cost almost doubles again.

It's not always transparent at the time of booking the T&C's of car hire and these are important questions to answer before renting a car.

1. Do you return the car empty or full?
2. Is the mileage limited?
3. What is the cost for an additional driver?
4. Is there an additional charge for drop off at another location?
5. Is CWD included? Is it with the car hire company or an independent?
6. Breakdown?
7. What is the excess? How do you recover your costs from CWD?
8. Windscreen and wheel rim protection?

I also think there should be some wear and tear allowance to vehicles, yes I'm responsible for scuffs to body work and damage to the paint, but stone chips are a bit difficult to avoid.

So I've gone back to using search engines and found a different one to book through this time. However I still have to collect the car from the place where I had the problems on my last visit. I've decided I'd rather keep the costs down, as I need car hire for 4 weeks and again in June for approximately 12 weeks.

Who do you use for car hire? Have you experienced similar problems?

Landlords v Tenants

We are both.

We are good landlords.

We are good tenants.

But we are fed up of people taking the piss with our homes.

We rent 2 properties. We own one, we rent it out. We redecorated and had the house professionally cleaned prior to our tenants moving in. They trashed our house. We redecorated and had it professionally cleaned. We have new tenants.

We're moving into our 3rd rented property as tenants. All 4 properties have been dirty and in need of repair, we've battled with each and every landlord and had to do the cleaning ourselves, we've waited months for repairs to be carried out. On vacating the properties we've been informed that unless it's professionally cleaned we won't get our deposit back.
It would seem that as soon as some landlords get your money and you've signed the contract, that's it. Put up and shut up. It makes no difference arguing.

We've just received our deposit back from the landlord in South Africa, minus carpet cleaning and tidying of the garden. Despite pointing out that NO cleaning was done prior to us moving in, and that we had the house cleaned on our departure, it doesn't seem to matter. We also handed the keys back to the agent on December 15th, our contract didn't expire until December 31st. The landlord has new tenants and as it is summer and the rainy season, the garden has grown since then and as he had to make it right for the new tenants he charged us for us. I've sent a strongly worded email, but I'm certain it'll just go unanswered.

No wonder landlords in general have such a bad name, but so should tenants.

In my experience it's the tenants that have caused the damage, the tenants that have lived in sheer utter filth, the tenants that have left their crap behind, the landlord may keep the deposit but they certainly haven't carried out any of the fundamental work required to make the house habitable.

The house we are renting has been repainted throughout, including paint on the windows and the tiles. But the house hadn't been cleaned and was in need of some basic repairs.

We choose to rent an older property because of it's location and individuality, the bathrooms are very dated as is the kitchen and in all honestly if we were purchasing the property we'd just rip them out and install new. I can see past the age and the colour. The kitchen cupboards are pink and the bathrooms are avocado, with white tiles and random patterns.

The rental agent, the landlord and the relocation company keep telling me I can't expect anyone to replace them, I know that, that is not my issue. All I want is for what is in the house to work and to be clean.

It's rather simple actually. I expect a light to work when I flick the switch, yes I've changed the globe, that's not the problem. I expect doors to open and close, after all that is their purpose, the same with the aluminium windows. I don't expect to be able to eat my meal off the kitchen floor, but I do expect it to be cleaner than this.

The relocation company used an agent to help with assisting us with finding a house, it was rented on December 7th 2014. A year's rent was paid in advance, the agent took their cut, then everyone apart from the landlord disappeared over christmas. We battled daily to get someone in to do the work and finally it was all completed last week, although the cleaning was of a poor standard but they'd tackled the grime, we were just left to finish it off.

Yesterday the landlord phoned, he is replacing the kitchen doors, no more Hello kitty Kitchen for me.