There are only few things in life which are as painful, annoying, energy and time consuming as moving, yes, shifting places is a pain in the... you know. There are a lot of unknowns and that baffles me: new rent, new neighborhood, am I going to like it? is it going to worth the money I'm spending in rent? Is the new landlord going to be an asshole at some point? then... the new house, things are never as advertised, they'll show you only what they want you to see, Real Estate agents are very good at distracting you from details during the site visit, there's only so much you can see in a few minutes in the property and that's a huge monster under the bed that will come back and bite you later on.
I've moved a handful of times because I don't like it, yes, it's very exciting to be at a new place and meet new people, but all the process around it is never straightforward. We recently moved to a bigger place, here in Dubai, I believe the biggest expense is paying the rent, so we delayed it as much as we could, then COVID gave us the perfect excuse to delay it even more. The truth is, we were all living in a 1 bedroom apartment for over seven years, since we arrived in Dubai. We lived in the same building, shifted apartments a couple of times within the same building, we started just the two of us, my wife and I, then Antonietta was born and now, 4 years later, Elise has come. It became very difficult to work from home at some point with everyone in the house and my workspace set up at the dining table.
Because of COVID, rents were doing down and kept low for a long while, so, COVID also gave us the opportunity to move from a 1 bedroom apartment in a very old building, into a brand new 3 bedrooms villa, with a backyard and everything for the kids to play and bring friends over, and the rest was almost the same as the apartment. But not everything is as pretty as it sounds...
Yes, it's weird but it's true, I wish I knew this before, we've had many issues with water-related things. First the kitchen sink was blocked, apparently there was a lot of dirt in the pipes so it had to be cleaned, we did that, then, suddenly water stopped coming out of the faucets, I called maintenance and the guy said the water tank was empty, so, he opened the main stopcock and water started coming into the tank, 20min after, my recently fixed brand new backyard was flooded. I called maintenance again and they took about 2h to come, it turned out the have the float valve, which closes the water once the tank is full, had to be replaced. This repair had to be done by my landlord, thankfully it didn't take too long to fix and the landscaping company fixed the grass again at no cost, KUDOS Green Lawn Landscaping for the GREAT customer support.
Then... no water again, after troubleshooting I found out the water tank was empty again, someone closed the main stopcock. No worries, I opened it and after 20min it was full again, no floods this time but no water was coming either, I guessed since the tank was empty the pumps might had got air-blocked, I tried to purge them myself but it didn't work, so I called maintenance again. They managed to purge the pumps and get everything working again, but they also said I had to replace the non-return valve, which prevents the water flowing back into the tank when the pumps are not working because there's enough pressure. Again... has to be fixed by my landlord.
Yes DAMAC, this is you!. Both times I had to call maintenance, the pointed out the Villa is out of warranty, which I find quite unfair, and I'm speaking for my landlord here, COVID delayed the handover because he was back home in India and was unable to flight back into the UAE for a long while, again, because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, something no one could foresee, it was officially handed over to him by the end of December 2020 and now, by April 2021, only 4 months after, warranty is expired. Let's pause here, the house was supposed to have 1 year warranty coverage, yes, a house has only one year of warranty. My TV has 2 years, my iPod, 3 years, my car, 5 years. A Louis Vuitton bag or a Gucci pair of shoes have a life time warranty, they can be repaired, anytime, anywhere, at any store in any country, as many times as you need, all of these warranties start running since the moment I get the items, not when I paid, not when they were built, they only start when I have the product in my hands. A "luxury villa" has only 1 year, which turned out to be 4 months only. You might think, yes, those are electronics, very small things, OK, let's go back to construction, my backyard landscaping has 8 years of warranty and the shades I installed have 3 years, the entire house only 4 months, how is this supposed to be right?
When my landlord came to check the water tank the first time, there was no trace of any float valve, if it was broken it had to be somewhere inside or around the tank, but there was none, I am sure the valve was not installed since the beginning, same with the NRV, they were not there. Those were old issues which went undiscovered because no one was living in the house until now. I am quite sure there are many more undiscovered issues I'll be stepping into...
but...
Because the warranty was less than 4 months... you get the point.
Because we moved from a one bedroom apartment into a 3 bedrooms villa, we had to buy some new furniture, we went to IKEA and HomeCenter of course, the experience has been beyond horrible.
The assemblers didn't follow the instructions and now, there's one cabinet pending for installation among some other additional enhancements for the same unit. I visited the store, explained everything that happened and they agreed to arrange a team to do all the things, I get a call from a supervisor to coordinate the date, we agreed on a Sunday, before noon. The day comes, no one shows up, next day we went out and I get a call from the driver "sir, I'll be there within 20min", I tell him "I was expecting you yesterday, I'm about 1h and 20m away" he answers "it's OK sir, we will be there". I reach the house, no truck is there, I call and the guy laughs at me and says "we waited 30min and left, we have other customers to serve", of course I complained a lot, they made me waste my time, I wasn't planing to come back home and I did because they said they could wait, I visited the store again and I'm waiting to coordinate... again...
The delivery of my daughter's bed was scheduled to happen between 13:00 and 17:00, after hanging up the phone on me multiple times, they showed up almost at 23:00, I was tired so I just let them do their job and leave, they scratched all of the stairs and the bed was also all scratched as if it was used for 5 years before reaching my daughter's room, I complained at the store and to site manager promises to call me back within 3 days, it's been over a week and nothing has happened
This is a recurring issue, it seems like all merchants forget about the customer right after taking their money and the only way to get things done is to stop being a nice human being, yell and threat to escalate things.
All of this has happened over the past 2 weeks, so... let's see how I solve everything hopefully quick... let's see what happens"