Thursday, November 11, 2010

Shifting - The Brickbats or What Should have gone Better ......

Thought I'd start by detailing where we had problems associated with our recent shift - mainly because there were really only two problem areas.

It took two weeks to get the phone and internet moved.  I suppose some might say we did well, but in fact, it was well planned for.  About three weeks before Shifting Day (S-Day) I approached the Warrnambool Telephone Company (WTC) to ask them to handle things for us.  Why?  There was some doubts about what lines were available into the Park, so I wanted someone who knew about such things to "manage" the disconnection/reconnection of such services.  Three days before S-Day, I revisited them to ask how things were going.  I became a little concerned when they had to get all the details again - fairly obviously, we had 'slipped through' their system unnoticed.  I was assured that things would be okay and they would call the mobile when they had news.  On S-Day+1 I enquired again and was advised that Telstra had acknowledged the order and they were awaiting advice on when it would be scheduled.  Eventually, they got back to me and advised it would be on Wednesday, 10 November: S-Day+14.  Telstra duly arrived on the 10th and completed the work.  I feel that WTC clearly dropped the ball on this one and let us down to the tune of about two weeks.

The other brickbat goes to the ANZ Bank.  Although we were not dealing directly with them, the purchaser of our house in Ziegler Parade was.  ANZ was very tardy when it came to approving the buyers finance (this criticism, to be fair, could probably be levelled at all of the major Banks).  However, in spite of having plenty of warning, they also held up settlement for a number of days.  This meant that technically the new owners could not move into Ziegler Parade as planned, which potentially put them to great inconvenience and potential added costs.  We got around this by providing them with a pre-settlement occupancy agreement which enabled them to move at a more convenient time.  We did not pursue the question of rental for the few days involved, since it was clearly not their fault.

So, I guess all in all, we fared very well when you consider all the possible things that can go wrong when shifting house.

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