I am sure you are all waiting with bated breath to find out how the water cooler saga was concluded. Well let me put you out of your misery and tell you how it ended.
Stu and I carted the bloody thing back to Sharaf for the third (and in our minds final) time, and Stu calmly told the “customer service” representative that they now had two options, either give us a refund or give us a new unit. After much too-ing (“oh please sir let us take it for another 3 days and try and repair it”) and fro-ing (“no, either give me my money back or give me a replacement unit”) we demanded to see the manager, or someone who at least had some authority to make a decision. After keeping us waiting another 10 minutes we were finally attended to by someone who looked semi-officious (well he WAS wearing a tie at least). I won’t bore you with the details of the argument that ensued, nor the shouting (me) and swearing (still me) and excuse making (all them) BUT he eventually agreed to compromise and made an exception for us. He then told us he would give us 80% of the original amount we spent (he had to deduct a 20% restocking fee!!?) as a voucher, which annoyingly meant we had no choice but to purchase another cooler from them. Some compromise! We did however purchase a different brand, here’s hoping this one will be a little better.
However our stresses are far from over it seems. The lease on our current villa is up on the 9th July. And as rental prices have plummeted since we signed there was no way we were renewing at that rate, and besides there are lots of empty places right now so we thought we would go into a 3 bedroom instead. More space for less money sounds like a good idea to me (and I need more cupboard space). It’s definitely a renters market right now. Luckily though we didn’t even have to go through the headache of looking at one nasty, dirty villa after another as the new job Stu is going to comes with a villa as part of the deal (amazed at how some people live but anyhow). So this past week we have been booking movers, cleaners (once for each villa), an aircon service and some maintenance work on the new place. To get the maintenance done we decided to call Emrill (who are a division of Emaar, the developer, and do all the maintenance required) to get a quotation. A simple enough request you would imagine. Nope, as we need several different things seen to (painting, changing a toilet seat, fixing a light and a doorbell) we needed 3 seperate quotes, with 3 seperate call-out fees, as not one single person is able to quote over painting, plumbing and electrical work according to the guy at Emrill. Since when do you need a plumber to change a toilet seat? Useless. In the end we called German Star Multiservices (who serviced our aircon before) to quote us for everything. Happily they are sending ONE guy to do this today. Lets hope it can be that simple for once.
Another niggle is relocating the broadband and telephone connection. So we went into the Mall of Emirates yesterday to put in this request (yes has to be done in person as you have to pay a fee for the pleasure). I was finally helped after standing in a queue at the du counter for about 15 minutes, only to be told that I was in fact in the incorrect queue and needed to go to the other counter. I had a bit of a wobbly with the guy (there is no sign to differentiate the various counters) but duly moved like a good paying customer, spent another 10 minutes to again be told that of the 3 other queues the one I picked was still wrong. Murphy’s law, the 2 counters with the nastiest queues were the ones I was supposed to go to (damn that faulty crystal ball). At that I flounced off in my best huff. I am not sure they even noticed..
OK I am going to stop complaining now. I promise. Everything else is going to be plain sailing, the move will be effortless and my hair will stop turning grey forthwith. Or something. Well one has to live in hope. Or denial. Not sure which.
The two high points of the last few days have definitely been winning the rugby yesterday (oh yeah) and being one of the birthday celebrants at work for the month and getting a birthday cake (haven’t had one of those in many years). I have been battling a summer cold so we haven’t been out to any fancy restaurants lately, very sorry there is no exciting food news.
Odd fact #9: Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President of the UAE and the Ruler of Dubai has signed up on facebook. What an awesome thing to do. There were some rumours that facebook, like flickr and some other sites, would eventually be blocked in the UAE. I guess this won’t happen now 🙂
moving house image from the ecobox blog.