So much for the bathrooms …

Well, so much for the two bathrooms, I don’t think it’s gonna happen, not with the company we talk to so far. We had an interesting meeting with them last friday.

As I was mentioning before, we had a very unpleasant experience with a guy from that company. As a result we sent them an official complaint letter, relatively tough but polite, in which we were expressing our total disapproval about the way their employee handled the whole stuff. So, the guy comes back from vacation on the 7th of january and tries to contact us. I was in a meeting but he manages to talk to Freya. He just wanted some information, didn’t say anything about our letter. I just assumed he didn’t get it yet. I just sent him the information he needed via email then we exchanged couple more emails, things he needed for our quote. I still didn’t understand how he could send us a quote when he didn’t actually see how the pipes in the store looked like, as it was planned.

Anyway, we get the quote (quite a lot of money) and we set up an appointment at their office to discuss it. We didn’t really know what to believe, we just thought we’d give them another chance after their previous failure. We get there and we talk about the quote for a while. We realize that there are things he does not know (particulary how the piping for the toilet from the 1st floor gets there), things he would know if he would’ve came when he promised. Finally, the guy pulls out of his folder our complaint letter and also a german translation of the my blog post that I mentioned above!

As a small sidenote, when I got home and checked the logs I saw that he googled my email domain, found my blog and then he read every single post, tag, category, etc from my blog. Everything through Google Translate because he most likely didn’t understand english or romanian. I wish I had more such thorough readers, I would have some cool statistics. I even felt flattered for a nanosecond or two but then I quickly got over it because I got some Gestapo-like flashbacks with people in a badly-lit room, looking at screens and analyzing each post, phrase, sentence, word and pixel from my blog, trying to find Achile’s heel.

Coming back to our discussion, the guy actually googled me. Most likely Freya too but she’s like 10.000 times less present than me on the net. He expressed his disapproval about my obvious lack of glory in describing his performance. On my personal blog … I tried to explain that he actually made us lose a lot of time and that now it’s unlikely we’ll ever finish the bathrooms before we have to move. I also tried to find out why he didn’t keep his promise with the visit and why he didn’t at least contact us to let us know, but in vain. He said that he was extremely busy (don’t see how that is my problem), that he had to cover for another colleague who was in vacation (again, I don’t think that is my problem) and in the end he said something like: “Why didn’t you contact me?”. WTF ?! If he made a promise he should keep it. And if he can’t then he should just pick up the phone and call, it takes what, 2 minutes ? But no, he preferred to leave his customer in the dark and leave in vacation. There were some other things too, like he actually came on friday but the lady in the store was not there. Even though he should’ve come when he promised, tuesday that is, during the day he spoke with Freya on the phone. And so on.

Anyway, seeing that we were not getting anywhere, we asked him to give us two minutes to decide how we should proceed. That was no problem, he got up and went to another office where he kept talking with someone else. The guy has a very strong schwäbisch accent so I didn’t really get all of it but Freya did. They were talking about us or about our bathrooms. Before we finished talking, another guy comes to us and starts explaining (speaking very very fast) how they are extremely busy, how they have a lot of orders which came in november (!!) and that there is no way they could start working before march. We were just looking at him unbelieving. We didn’t even bother to tell him that the guy we initially talked to said that we would get the quote before Christmas and that if all was well, they could start working in early January. If they had orders from the previous month that guy would’ve known. Obviously something stinks here.

Then, when he heard we still need to speak with the bank about financing, he looked at the final price and started to talk with what appeared to be great enthusiasm about us having to add quite a lot to that amount because the house is of old construction and things can “come up”. Right. It was kinda clear to us that they don’t really want to do this job and that they just want to get rid of us. We had explained to them from the very beginning that we are tight with the time and there is no way we can wait until march. Good riddance, we just said our goodbyes and we left.

See, it does not really matter how big the company is or how good your shop looks like; in the end the way the customer is treated matters. Pitty, the guy we talked to initially (the boss, we assumed) seemed like a really nice guy, sincere and wanting to help. But otherwise … let’s just say we were less than impressed.

The bad thing is, now we have to do something with the existent bathrooms before we move. After we make them usable, we’ll have a bit of breathing space and we can start looking for someone more serious. What a mess.

I see stupid people!

No, it’s not a quote from the movie “The Sixth Sense” even though it looks like it, there it was “I see dead people“. But I see them more and more, especially in Schorndorf, the city where we will move to.

As I was saying, we had a meeting with a guy from a company which renovates bathrooms. The guy came at the promised hour, looked a bit around, especially in the room with all the water pipes. Eventually he realized he has to see also some pipes in the shop downstairs, some kind of nail and beauty salon. Since that place is closed on mondays and we didn’t have the keys, it was decided he will come again the next day when the girl with the shop works. Ok, so next day Freya tries to call him at the mobile number from his business card. There she only finds an automated message which tells her to call another mobile number. WTF ? This was the first clue of the total failure which we were about to encounter.

So she calls at the new number, the guy answers and she confirms him that the girl is there and will be working the whole day. The guy promises to come and have a look at the pipes. The plan was that he will get all the information he needed so he could make us an offer before Christmas. Which was also what we agreed with his boss on our initial visit to their place. Today (so after one week) seeing that we didn’t get anyting from the guy, no email, no offer, no phonecall, I ask the girl downstairs if the guy ever showed up. She said he didn’t. This kinda annoyed both of us so we got into the car and drove quick to their company, which is only 5 minutes away. There the place looked kinda deserted but someone was still at the reception. We explain to the women there the problem, to which she replies: “Oh, Mr. SoAndSo just left in vacation, he’ll be back next year on the 7th of January”.

This really pissed off both of us. So not only the idiot does not show up when he promises, does not send us the promised offer but what else does he do ? He leaves in vacation without even bothering to call us! What kind of shit is this ? I don’t know if all employees from that place are like that but our trust in this company was simply lost forever. At the end the woman offered to send the guy a message that he should call us when he gets back from vacation. We just told her to forget it, we don’t want that punk doing anything in our house anymore, we’ll just take our money somewhere else if they don’t feel like working.

The bad thing is, this made us lose valuable time and now it’s unlikely we’ll be able to finish the bathrooms until end of January. Maybe if we are lucky and we find someone who wants to work for a change.

Since we talk about idiots, let’s stop a bit to the girl with the beauty salon. Since she has her business in our house, she has to pay rent. Which rent is paid at the beginning of the month (December in this case). It’s now 23rd of December and we still have not received anything. Last week Freya asked her about the rent and the girl said she already made the transfer and we should be getting the money shortly. Normally such a bank transfer takes 2 working days, rarely longer. So today I go to her and ask her again about the rent. She’s just babbling some about the fact that we should get the money today or tomorrow since she just made the transfer yesterday. I thought I’d be polite so I told her I will get my account again. Even though I knew nothing came in. So she obviously lied to Freya last week. Eventually she comes to us later on today and ask about the bank account. WTF ? This is a new account, I don’t know it by heart yet so I connect online (Nokia E51 + DSL + Wireless router = The Win), I look in the online banking thingy and I tell her the account. I wonder if she remembers it long enough to make the payment.

And in the end of this rather long post, I feel I have to introduce the last idiot: the lady from the agency, through which we bought the house. I have never seen so far a more un-professional, confused and short-sighted person. I exchanged with her many emails and each single time she managed to annoy me. I send her an email with some request, she reads it kinda quick because I see the read receipt and then SHE DOES NOTHING! She does not reply that she received my email and that she will work on it. When she eventually does, it’s late, sometimes days. In her reply she anwers some questions and forgets others, making me waste time and ask again. When she sends me some paperwork she does not do it via email (scanned) or fax as I requested, she just sends it by post so we waste 2-3 more days. The only thing she ever did quick was to send us the invoice. We signed the contract in an afternoon and next day we had the letter with the invoice!

I really hope those three specimens are not representative for the whole Schorndorf.