UK vent or is it just me?

[UnderProtest]

We have had a couple issues with our house and had a contractor give a quote.  He quoted 3-4 days to paint the stairwell (5 levels) and this seemed outrageous.  I thought it was just contractors in general and particularly this contractor.  Now, I have cleaning people here cleaning up a mess from a water leak.  They quoted me an hour to two to clean one toilet.  Am I crazy or is this just obscene?  Please help me understand this.  Some of it has to be cultural.  What is the appropriate response for things like this?

[UnderProtest]

Paging teatimefor2 and @villainv

[frlcb]

We had cleaners for 3 years in London and they would take 2 hours to clean our whole flat. That seems crazy. But customer service in the UK is less than desirable as a whole.

[teatimefor2]

You're renting, right? I would make our landlord handle these matters.

Without being judgmental/racist, where are your cleaners from? Are they British or eastern European? With my office, we found that our eastern European cleaners moved super slow and were very relaxed. So relaxed, that when I was working late one night, I caught them making out on a couch in our lobby.

I always tried to get three quotes for anything I had to get done.

[frlcb]

Aug 11, 2014 13:37:15 GMT -5 teatimefor2 said:

You're renting, right? I would make our landlord handle these matters.

Without being judgmental/racist, where are your cleaners from? Are they British or eastern European? With my office, we found that our eastern European cleaners moved super slow and were very relaxed. So relaxed, that when I was working late one night, I caught them making out on a couch in our lobby.

I always tried to get three quotes for anything I had to get done.

Ours were always polish and they worked fast!

[UnderProtest]

teatimefor2
The contractors are Polish, the cleaners were Indian.

We are renting so the landlord is paying for everything, its just been a pain trying to schedule time to get this all done. I refuse to use them for painting because its so obscene. The main issue with the contractor was fixing the kitchen faucet. It came loose within a couple weeks of moving in, they fixed it once and it came loose again quickly. They told the landlord that it would be a half days work to permanently fix the faucet. So they have been fighting that out for awhile and then the property manager dropped the ball. He came last week to temporarily tighten it and spent 15 minutes fixing it. Today he came for the permanent fix.....it literally took 45 minutes from the time they walked in the door until all their tools were cleaned up. How do you get from 4+ hours to 45 minutes. I'm so irritated.....at the landlord, the property managers and this contractor. They've all screwed around and I'm the only one that suffers. Right now I really don't like living here.

[pittpurple]

I'm sorry you're having a rough week. I'm just wondering what the problem is though - if you're renting, none of this is really anything to do with you. Isn't your agency organising all this? My agency just gives keys to whoever the people are who do the work and I just carry on with my day.

[blushing]

Last year I had to employ some one to come in and clean our empty flat when we moved out. I couldn't do as I had emergency surgery 2 days before. DH says she spent 2 hours in the bathroom! 2 freaking hours! And then I went into the bathroom later, she had not cleaned under the taps, or behind the toilet, or cleaned the shower door glass. I don't know what she did. She spent another hour wiping shelves and some skirting boards. But any that were higher up than I can see were not wiped. As a result I had cleaning to do and ended up back at the hospital. She has never been employed by us again, and its left a bad taste in our mouth about cleaning people. Oh, and she was British.

[Deleted]

Our landlord and rental agency handled hiring people for repair work, but we never had any issues with people working slowly or poorly. Except one cleaner who was new and really young and inexperienced.

But we live in a small town where word of mouth is EVERYTHING, so I think people tend to have a better work ethic because if not they'd be out of business fast.

[UnderProtest]

Aug 12, 2014 2:24:46 GMT -5 pittpurple said:

I'm sorry you're having a rough week. I'm just wondering what the problem is though - if you're renting, none of this is really anything to do with you. Isn't your agency organising all this? My agency just gives keys to whoever the people are who do the work and I just carry on with my day.

I'm not particularly comfortable with them giving keys out so I've had to be home for each time someone comes to the house to "fix" something.  It took about 6 appointments, plus one no show, in order to get the water leak fixed and that doesn't include the clean up or a double check to make sure it isn't still leaking.  While I am a stay at home mom, scheduling all this stuff limits what I can do and is frustrating....especially given the no shows.  Plus, I'm home by myself with two kids and letting in random guys with no uniform and no identification is a bit scary.  I don't know if this is the norm or if I'm just untrusting.  Plus, no one can communicate anything.  The property manager isn't much better, she will tell me she will call back and never does.  She dropped the ball on getting the kitchen faucet fixed so it was broken for months.  I think its just all come to a head this week and I'm so mad at everyone.  It seems like everything is so much harder here.  I had to threaten not to pay the rent in order to get the faucet fixed.

[UnderProtest]

Aug 12, 2014 4:10:29 GMT -5 @villainv said:

Our landlord and rental agency handled hiring people for repair work, but we never had any issues with people working slowly or poorly. Except one cleaner who was new and really young and inexperienced.

But we live in a small town where word of mouth is EVERYTHING, so I think people tend to have a better work ethic because if not they'd be out of business fast.

We are in London....no one gives a fuck, especially the contractor who renovated the house.

[Deleted]

Aug 12, 2014 3:31:16 GMT -5 blushing said:

Last year I had to employ some one to come in and clean our empty flat when we moved out. I couldn't do as I had emergency surgery 2 days before. DH says she spent 2 hours in the bathroom! 2 freaking hours! And then I went into the bathroom later, she had not cleaned under the taps, or behind the toilet, or cleaned the shower door glass. I don't know what she did. She spent another hour wiping shelves and some skirting boards. But any that were higher up than I can see were not wiped. As a result I had cleaning to do and ended up back at the hospital. She has never been employed by us again, and its left a bad taste in our mouth about cleaning people. Oh, and she was British.

I think we used the same cleaner....

[pittpurple]

Our shower has been broken for 3 days and no one seems particularly anxious to fix it. I guess I've just gotten used to it. We hand our key out left, right and centre - we both work full time and travel fairly regularly, so if we had to wait until one of us could be home nothing would ever get done.

I don't know about London, but all my renting friends have workers in their flats all the time with no one being home. I personally am far more comfortable with strangers in my house when I'm not there than when I am, I guess I'm more paranoid of someone hurting me than someone stealing my stuff? Am not sure that's actually normal though :-)

[UnderProtest]

Aug 12, 2014 5:24:27 GMT -5 pittpurple said:

Our shower has been broken for 3 days and no one seems particularly anxious to fix it. I guess I've just gotten used to it. We hand our key out left, right and centre - we both work full time and travel fairly regularly, so if we had to wait until one of us could be home nothing would ever get done.

I don't know about London, but all my renting friends have workers in their flats all the time with no one being home. I personally am far more comfortable with strangers in my house when I'm not there than when I am, I guess I'm more paranoid of someone hurting me than someone stealing my stuff? Am not sure that's actually normal though :-)

If I worked I wouldn't have a choice so I would have to be okay with it.  Since I am technically available, I would prefer to be here since I don't know who they are sending.  Its this damn contractor who likes to waste time and is always late, even for times he sets.  I don't know.  I'm just really aggravated and everything is bothering me.  

[UnderProtest]

OMG. I just got a call at 3 from the property manager telling me that the contractor couldn't come between 1-2 today. I officially give up.

[origami]

Aug 12, 2014 9:11:16 GMT -5 UnderProtest said:

OMG. I just got a call at 3 from the property manager telling me that the contractor couldn't come between 1-2 today. I officially give up.

ok I'm sorry. I'm LOL because my day has been terrible too and it feels a little better to know someone else is also having a day.

(My day went south because we are trying to buy a car. It's an epic clusterfuck even though my DH works for a car company and they manufacture the car we are buying at his work. I think he could steal one easier than buy one. :::shakes fist:

So solidarity *fist bump* to you.

[UnderProtest]

Aug 12, 2014 9:15:53 GMT -5 origami said:

Aug 12, 2014 9:11:16 GMT -5 UnderProtest said:

OMG. I just got a call at 3 from the property manager telling me that the contractor couldn't come between 1-2 today. I officially give up.

ok I'm sorry. I'm LOL because my day has been terrible too and it feels a little better to know someone else is also having a day.

(My day went south because we are trying to buy a car. It's an epic clusterfuck even though my DH works for a car company and they manufacture the car we are buying at his work. I think he could steal one easier than buy one. :::shakes fist:

So solidarity *fist bump* to you.

I get that things aren't as easy for non-Americans in America, but really?  Why is everything so difficult?  Good luck with the car buying.  I can't imagine how bad that process would be.  Its annoying when you know what you are doing.

[UnderProtest]

Aug 12, 2014 10:11:30 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I'm starting to think I will really appreciate having a handy DH while I'm in London. Of course, he won't be coming until 6-9 months after me so I better not break anything until then

Sorry you're having a rough time, UnderProtest. I hope someone comes through and helps you soon.

Can I borrow him when he comes over?

On a nicer note, have you been able to figure out where you might want to look for flats?  If you PM your budget, I can peruse right move when bored.

[UnderProtest]

Aug 12, 2014 10:31:10 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Aug 12, 2014 10:17:43 GMT -5 UnderProtest said:

Can I borrow him when he comes over?

On a nicer note, have you been able to figure out where you might want to look for flats?  If you PM your budget, I can peruse right move when bored.

I've been known to loan him out...LOL!

I still have no idea about where to look for flats and am trying not to worry about it too much since I'll be in corporate housing for the first month.  But I would love suggestions if you want to look!  I haven't come up with a budget yet but I'm thinking for sure no more than 500GBP/week, ideally much less, ideally a 2BR, and somewhere it would be easy to get to the Victoria tube station area where my office is.  I hope you find better stuff than I've been seeing!

You are looking to be close to the Victoria tube station???

[UnderProtest]

RockNVoll

How about this one? Its less than a 5 minutes walk from Victoria station.


www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-47490062.html

[frlcb]

Aug 12, 2014 12:20:07 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Aug 12, 2014 10:58:47 GMT -5 UnderProtest said:

RockNVoll

How about this one? Its less than a 5 minutes walk from Victoria station.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-47490062.html

Thanks!  I don't need to have a place right by Victoria station, that's just the stop I'd likely commute to in order to walk to my office so something that's easily accessible to that line/stop is what I meant.

Are there places that are a little more modern?  That one actually is a lot better than some of the others I've seen online, but it would be great to have more counter space in the kitchen and bathroom (though maybe these just aren't great pictures).

A big kitchen and bathroom are going to be very difficult to find for that budget in a close in area. Space is at a premium in London, so is modernity. Trust me, you get used to it

[pittpurple]

So I'm not in London but I imagine the flats are pretty similar. For whatever reason, I have never seen any counter space in a bathroom anywhere I've lived or visited here. There usually isn't even a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. So I think you'd be lucky to find anything.

We had less kitchen counter space than the link at 2 flats we've lived in here. The thing that helped was looking for places that are open plan living/kitchen - then there's usually a long counter dividing the spaces that doubled the counter space in the kitchen. Any tenement flat you get here will have been re-divided from an older property so the builders are always cramming extra rooms in or dividing rooms in strange ways so you don't usually get the logical storage solutions and rectangular rooms you get in newer cities.

[Deleted]

Aug 11, 2014 12:37:31 GMT -5 frlcb said:

We had cleaners for 3 years in London and they would take 2 hours to clean our whole flat. That seems crazy. But customer service in the UK is less than desirable as a whole.

Agree with this. People tend to work slow.

And locals here told me from the start not to hire locals as cleaners. The good cleaners here, the ones that are in demand, are Polish.

[frlcb]

Aug 13, 2014 2:17:14 GMT -5 pittpurple said:

So I'm not in London but I imagine the flats are pretty similar. For whatever reason, I have never seen any counter space in a bathroom anywhere I've lived or visited here. There usually isn't even a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. So I think you'd be lucky to find anything.

We had less kitchen counter space than the link at 2 flats we've lived in here. The thing that helped was looking for places that are open plan living/kitchen - then there's usually a long counter dividing the spaces that doubled the counter space in the kitchen. Any tenement flat you get here will have been re-divided from an older property so the builders are always cramming extra rooms in or dividing rooms in strange ways so you don't usually get the logical storage solutions and rectangular rooms you get in newer cities.

Agree with this. Finding lots of cabinet/counter space in a bathroom/kitchen in London is unusual. It isn't impossible, but it certainly correlates to how much money you want to spend as well. Flats and houses are generally laid out less open than in the US, unless they are new, which can also be hard to come by.