This morning I was woken up by a phone call from Tony the Plumber*, who claimed he was meant to be coming in to fix our roof. He asked me to please phone the property manager and let them know.
Now, is it just me, or is the way you get repairs done in this country kind of circular?
- The tenant (me) calls the property manager to inform them repairs need doing.
- The property manager waits two weeks and then calls the body corporate to pass on the message that repairs need doing.
- The body corporate waits a week and then calls a repairman to tell them to do the repairs.
- The repairman waits a few days and then calls the tenant to tell them they're coming.
- The tenant calls the property manager to inform them that the game of Chinese Whispers is nearly at an end.
If I were in charge, things would be different.
_________
* Alternatively known as Tony the Builder, Tony the Electrician, Tony the Roof-Repairman, and Tony from Pest Control. (Our property manager believes in the Renaissance man.) Usually he at least chooses the appropriate epithet when he calls us up, and at first I thought there was a rule that every Australian repairman had to be called Tony, but this time he stuck with his plumber persona even though he's supposed to be doing roof repairs.
2 Comments:
That is the way it works in my apartment complex as well... except that, on occasion, our version of Tony also stops in to try to catch the pigeons on the deck with his bare hands. We don't want them caught and know he can't catch them, so we let him in to try another round of attempted pigeon murder...
oh yea, and you get to skip the part where the dim-bulb who answers the office phone forgets to give your message to the control-freak manager, so you have to call back four times to get the process started.
Yeah, They have been carefully keeping the name of our property manager from us so that we can't figure out her direct email or ask to be put through to her. So we ALWAYS have to deal with the front office dim-bulbs.
Talk to me! (You know you want to!)