We’ve been especially quiet through April. Why? Because we’ve had no frigging Internet! The reason being we moved in April to a newish place in Canary Wharf and made the mistake of staying with Orange as our service provider. More on that in a little bit…

Those reading our blog regularly since we first moved to the UK may remember my post about our search for a place to rent last year followed by Mimi’s post when we finally found a place in Earls Court. If you read those entries again, you’ll remember I wanted to live in or around Canary Wharf while Mimi wanted West London. As always, women usually win these “discussions” and get their way. So after an excruciatingly long search, we ended up in an old but redecorated flat in Earls Court. I say “redecorated” because calling it “refurbished” would be over stating what has been done to it. Sure, it had a newish kitchen and a remodelled bathroom, but other than that it just had a fresh coat of paint. We knew this so I’m by no means saying we were duped.

Our initial lease was 6 months paid up front. I think we mentioned that without a credit rating (which is the problem for anyone who moves to the UK and doesn’t yet have a job), you cannot pass any reference checks. So you either need a local guarantor or you pay your 6 months rent up front. We had no choice but to go with the 2nd option. That also meant that we had to renew our lease in October 2007. At that point, we both had jobs so we passed reference checks and could then pay rent on a monthly basis. The standard one year lease usually has a 6 month break clause, which means you can move out after 6 months if you give 2 months notice…which we did in February to break the lease in April.

It’s not that we didn’t enjoy living in West London. We loved the location. Even I admit to that…and I miss that convenience even now. The problem was the fact that anything you want to rent at a reasonable price in West London will be old. That’s just a fact. And very rarely does it get refurbished properly because that essentially means gutting the whole building…hence my “redecorated” comment. So even before moving in, I expected there to be problems around the things you cannot see like the plumbing, heating, insulation etc. I also made sure Mimi understood these things and she didn’t seem to mind because she got her West London address! Sure enough we encountered quite a few things along the way, hence the decision to break the lease at 6 months and move to a MUCH MUCH MUCH newer place.

Here are the main ones (I’ve omitted all the little annoying things because they pale in comparison and also had more to do with our neighbours and not the actual apartment):

  • Bitterly cold except in summer – Old buildings usually mean the insulation is almost non-existent. So that building itself without heating will be almost the same temperature as the air outside. There are also gaps in all the window fittings and frames so heat escapes and cold air comes in. Add to that the fact that the so called heaters are the old ones fitted into the wall which basically use hot water as the heating mechanism. Essentially, it heats up by running the hot water through a metal frame pretending it’s a heater. Doesn’t really work that well. I could put my hand on it directly and leave it there as long as I felt like doing so. To be fair, it did heat up the apartment slightly, but only because without it turned on, we needed to wear the same clothes we would wear to go out. Put simply it was just F*$&ing cold!
  • Bed bugs – When we first moved in, we noticed some reddish brown stains on the bed frame but didn’t think anything of it. We just cleaned it up and left it at that. When the temperature started to get warmer, we started to get red itchy spots all over our legs and arms. We told the landlord who then called the pest controller in. They said it was a beetle of some sort and that the larvae irritates skin and leave itchy spots. So they treated the apartment for the beetles (3 times over the space of 3 weeks) and we thought the problem was solved. Incidentally, at the end of the treatment, we left to go on our trip to China and also back home to Oz. When I got back (I arrived back in the UK a few weeks before Mimi), I woke up the next morning with the same red spots all over my legs and arms! Worse than that, I noticed red blood spots all over the mattress. I think it was when I squished the bugs through the night as I moved around. I lifted up the bed and to my horror saw the actual bugs on the frame and the mattress! I took pictures but I don’t want to post them on here in case anyone reading is squeamish. The landlord got the pest controllers back who upon inspection of the bed confirmed the bed bugs and also pointed out the reddish stains on the bed frame (which we noticed upon moving in) were sure signs on the bed bugs. In other words, they were already there before we moved in…although our landlord assured us that she had NEVER had bed bug issues before. Anyway, the bed frame now had to be treated and we had to sleep in the living room on the air mattress for a whole month! My back is still “thanking” me for that month on the air mattress. Thankfully after the treatment, they bugs were gone…at least for now. I don’t know if they’ll be back but it doesn’t matter because we don’t live there anymore!
  • Dust dust dust everywhere – When the place was redecorated, we think they basically ripped up the carpet and just polished the original wooden floor boards and then treated them. Problem with that was the fact the original floor boards had half centimetre gaps between each long plank. So there was no way we could see what lay underneath the boards nor could we clean them properly. They were just permanently dirty and that meant we could never clean up all the dust as a lot of it was under the boards.
  • Plumbing – Apparently, the basement flat in the building had a water leakage problem that had been going on for 6 months. They had essentially moved out of their bedroom because the wall was “growing mushrooms”. Their words, not mine. They eventually complained enough to building management that plumbers had to come in. It came down to the point where they isolated a pipe that was the cause of the leak and it happened to run through the middle of our flat! So they had to cut a hole in the wall to get at the pipe and the just seal back the hole with a board…which still had not been fixed up properly on the day we moved out. Luckily the plumber that did the work was smart enough to know he could get at the pipe through the wall or else they had to rip our kitchen sink out!
  • Tricky boiler – Our hot water boiler took us some time to figure out how to use. It was temperamental and sometimes refused to produce any hot water…or so we thought. This was until we figured out that the “magic switch” was the kitchen tap. Turning on the hot water via the kitchen tap somehow forced the boiler to generate hot water. It was still annoying however because one of us yelling out to the other in “mid shower” to “turn on the kitchen tap” was quite a common occurrence.
  • Leak in the ceiling – 2 weeks before we moved out, the ceiling started leaking. We’re guessing it was a pipe running through the building, but we’re not sure. The landlord was still trying to get it sorted when we moved out.
  • Boiler broke – 1 week before we moved out, the boiler stopped working. That meant we had NO HOT WATER. Luckily we still had our gym membership (which we had cancelled but ran through until the end of April) so we had to go to the gym EVERYDAY simply to take a shower. Lots of fun! Incidentally, that was the most we had ever used our gym in the space of a month. Pretty bad on our part.

The boiler breaking and ceiling leaking in the last 2 weeks of our tenancy were a sure sign we made the right decision to move out. Even Mimi finally agreed that she was happy to be moving to a much newer place. I’m going to get in trouble for this next statement, but I’ve learned that the only way to get her to agree to something is to let her try things out her way first…unfortunately that meant living in that Earls Court flat for a whole year! That’s not to say I didn’t come around to the whole “West London” thing. Like I’ve already said, you CANNOT beat the convenience and location…if you can put up with everything else. The only way we both would have been 100% happy in West London was to pay 40% more rent for a properly refurbished place…and that certainly wasn’t going to work within our budget!

Now on to the new place. Remember how we saw over 60 places before we found our place in Earls Court? The best thing about that was we were VERY well researched and educated about what presented good value. Fortunately we had also seen some places in Canary Wharf last year. This time around, we only saw 1 place and took it. In other words, we went from one extreme to the other. Mimi didn’t even physically see our new place. I had a business meeting in Canary Wharf and simply arranged a viewing for myself to fit in with my meeting. I took some pictures so Mimi could have a look and decide if she wanted to have a look herself. In the end she decided that she liked what she saw in the photos and we agreed to make an offer without her even taking a look because we thought £300 per week was good value (it wasn’t listed at this price so it’s not like we offered the advertised price). We basically agreed that if they would take the offer we’d be happy to go for it. They did. Oh, did I mention the new place has a gym and pool for residents? Add to that the fact that our rent is now lower than what we paid in Earls Court and we’re in an even better position. Sure the council taxes here are 50% more (council taxes in the Tower Hamlets are generally more than in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea), but we don’t have to pay for water and gas (included in the maintenance costs paid by the landlord), so the bills balance out (we did our sums to verify this).

To add to all the positives, I’m changing jobs and my new role happens to be based in Canary Wharf! That wasn’t planned. It just worked out that way.

In summary, we’re happy with the new place for the following reasons:

  • Monthly costs go down.
  • MUCH newer.
  • MUCH warmer.
  • MUCH cleaner.
  • Gym + Pool

On the negative side:

  • Not as convenient.
  • We’re still working out the heater timer – we need to have a gap of an hour between showers otherwise the 2nd person will run out of hot water halfway through.

Overall, we’re still ahead in this new place I think…I’m not going to speak for Mimi but I think she agrees :)

As for the whole issue with our Internet…

I complained last year (here and here) about how difficult it was to get our Internet in Earls Court set up mainly because of Orange’s incompetence. This time around was no different. Customer service is still non-existent and they refused to take any responsibility for the fact it took 3 whole weeks to get the service enabled in our new place. I gave them advance notice before we even moved in and all they could do was blame BT (because they own all the lines) and keep saying “I understand your frustration sir”. Well if you understand my frustration, then do something about it!!!!!! They were also still charging us for the 3 weeks of non-existent service. When I asked them why, they blamed BT again. If I could do this again, I would have cancelled the service with Orange upon moving and just changed service providers. At least they wouldn’t have charged me for the non-service and I would have been rid of Orange! The only disadvantage of doing so would have been that we would be stuck with another 12 month contract, which is not that big a deal because we’re planning to stay here for the next 12 months anyway.

The whole Internet service thing doesn’t seem to be limited to Orange however. I’ve spoken to other people and looked in forums and it seems to be the case across the UK. For a first world, technologically advanced country, the UK does an APPALLING job when it comes to telecommunication matters. I would take Telstra or Optus any day!

That’s enough complaining from me for today. I’m going to go relax on our balcony and look out at the river…oh forgot to mention, we have a balcony with a partial view of the Thames. :)