[Miscellaneous] Moving sucks part 2

Moving still sucks. But at least I now have the keys to my flat! It's taken long enough for me to become immensely frustrated though - it's not like I moved down here over two weeks ago, or applied for my flat almost a month ago or anything...

There's been a lot of waiting around for people to do things over the last two weeks.

My first week at work was eventful, and rather frustrating. I knew that it would take a little while for the estate agents to sort everything out, but I ended up having to phone them several times just to try and find out what was happening! My first phone call was on the Monday, and I was told that the application had been successful, and that they were just about to get my references. That's fine, and I had a text from my old landlady asking if I'd put her details down as a reference anywhere as someone had tried to contact her (turns out I'd forgotten to tell her about my application. Woops!). So I explained, and she was fine with it.

Then I heard nothing for five whole days, and felt I had to phone again part way through Friday to find out what the situation was. This time I was told that my references had come in and were acceptable, and that they were waiting to do the inventory. Ok then.

Fine, whatever, It would be nice to get access to my flat at some point.

I then went to the EPSC conference in London for a week. On the Tuesday I phoned them to see what was happening - the inventory had been done, but they were now waiting for the landlord to sort out the gas certificate. At this point I'm getting very irritated. I'd hoped to be able to move in before the EPSC, but now I just wanted to be able to move in soon after I got back from London, which wasn't looking very plausible an aim. 

My last phone call was on Friday morning. I'd not heard anything back, and how long can a gas certificate take to sort out anyway? The news was mixed - the certificate had been sorted out, but the company that did the checks hadn't returned the keys yet. What's more, they had a history of failing to do so, to which my response would be 'so why do you keep using them then?' The final step in the saga was that I was phoned on Friday afternoon, and told that they keys were back, everything was sorted, and the earliest they could arrange pick-up was Tuesday. Ok, but why? What do you still have to do? Aaaarrrrggghhhh!

Seriously, HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO GET THE KEYS TO MY FLAT!

The most frustrating part about this whole process has been that each time I've phoned the person at the estate agents has said that they'd call me back once they knew what was happening. But each time I've had to call them up to get an update. You'd think that they would keep me updated, or at least call back when they said they would, but apparently that's too difficult. I appreciate that they must have a lot of properties to deal with, but the customer service has been pretty terrible.

Finally, this morning I managed to get hold of the keys. I've been to the flat, moved the bits and bobs that were in my car into the empty bedroom, and had a quick check around. It's a bit depressing at the moment, as it's completely empty, but with time it should be rather nice. At least I've finally got the keys!

This was pretty much my reaction when I finally got the keys.