This is the kind of reason why I never get anything done in the evenings lately >_<

[rallamajoop]

Yesterday, I checked the mailbox to find a letter from the real estate agent to say we hadn't been paying our rent. More exactly, it was phrased to say we were being evicted and had until the 30th to clear out, but with a clause down the bottom to add that we could still get away with staying there if we paid up within the next seven days.

AAAAHHHHHHHH WHAT!?!?!?!

Cue a panicked evening of running around madly, checking the online bank records for every payment I'd made in the last two months, then two phone calls to two different departments of the bank to make absolutely sure everything had gone through. Everything had. We took some solace in the knowledge that we could see no conceivable way whatever'd gone wrong was our fault, but the letter was obviously just a form letter with a signature at the bottom, so there were no actual details we could use to confirm. By that time, of course, it was far too late to phone the estate agency itself, so everything else had to be put off until tomorrow.

This morning, armed with as much paperwork as I could find to prove our case, I phoned them up. As soon as I told the lady who answered the phone who I was and why I was calling, she told me that we should be getting a letter of apology in the mail today. Apparently - much as we'd been guessing-slash-hoping - it was all due to a computer glitch at their end which hadn't recorded some of the dates correctly, and they were very sorry for all the trouble.

I could really do without any more of this stuff happening around here for a week or two, kthx. -_-

Comments

[aphelion-orion.livejournal.com]

Wait, what?! o____O

Man. I'm sorry you had such a shock, that must have been terrible. *hugs* But seriously, what is it with all this "fire first, ask questions later" business that's been going around lately? I seem to recall days when people would bother inquiring before threatening and/or simply terminating contracts/evicting people from homes/filing lawsuits. Or maybe I'm just getting old, at twenty-three. *facepalm*

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction too. (I had stuff I was going to do with those couple of hours I lost running around madly and phoning banks and panicking! I do not have enough free hours in the week to waste it like this! *gnaws fingernails*)

The lady we spoke to when we signed the lease did make it very clear they considered paying the rent on time to be Serious Business and being late with it more than once or twice would be grounds for eviction, and if, say, a bank transfer went through a couple of days late or something it would be considered Our Fault for not paying well in advance. Sounds like by their standards, sending us an eviction letter with a highlighted clause at the bottom telling us we can get out of getting evicted by paying up quickly is their notion of a polite first warning. *insert eyeroll here* But seriously, if they're going to be that trigger happy, they could at least make sure their computer system works a little more reliably than this.

[aphelion-orion.livejournal.com]

*hugs* And it's so hard to calm down, too. If you want to vent or something, you know where to find me. ♥

Well, yeah, but still. Aren't there, like, warning letters for this sort of thing? At least, here there are, most of the time. Certainly in serious matters like housing... And those rules for bank transfers not going through in time sound bordering on illegal. Isn't there a system that says as long as you can prove you paid/the money was withdrawn from your account by date X, then it's perfectly valid and in time?

I know you just had a huge scare, but you still might want to consider drafting up a letter of complaint. Most likely, it won't do much good, but I think they should know that scaring their customers like this is NOT appreciated. I'd hate to see what their policies do to people with fragile nerves...

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

I'm good, really. ^^; When I make that phone call, I was expecting to have to dig out all our rent receipts and drive over there with print outs from my bank account and basically do the whole song and dance to prove we weren't in the wrong *if I was lucky*. Having the first person I spoke to immediately admit the error was such a huge relief that I'm a lot less ragey about this than I would be otherwise.

From talking to other people about it, it sounds like it varies a lot how this stuff is handled from agency to agency. The rental market in this city is so insane lately that it's a regular news item, so I guess they can pretty much set whatever terms they like, and being late with the rent more than a couple of times is apparently enough for eviction even if you do pay up late with these people. It'll all be there in the paperwork we had to sign just to get the house, I'm sure. -_-

And those rules for bank transfers not going through in time sound bordering on illegal. Isn't there a system that says as long as you can prove you paid/the money was withdrawn from your account by date X, then it's perfectly valid and in time?

I'd hope if you had paid a week in advance and the bank had stuffed up big time then you might have some leeway, since that's circumstances way beyond your control. The main point is that it's accepted that most transfers take two or three days to clear, so you're expected to pay at least that much time in advance to allow for it. Pretty strict, but at least they were up front about it.

I don't think there's much point complaining, since they did make it clear how seriously they took the whole rent thing when we signed the lease, and they did apologise afterwards. Our main beef with them is that after they found the error they didn't immediately phone us to explain. They've got two different contact numbers they can reach us on, and making us go through all this stress while we waited for snail mail to reach us was not professional of them at all.