Okay, I'm not EXACTLY back in the UK yet, but I've had a week or so of intense UK-related frustration, so I figure it counts.
About two weeks ago, I got a frantic message from one of my housemates next year that said, roughly, "I love you dear but if you don't pay the estate agents before Friday we're losing the house x Kat"
Yeah.
So, I got on the phone to the estate agents, who informed me that I owed them £720. Fair enough. I was aware of that. I paid the money over the phone, asked them if there was anything else I needed to do, they said no, I hung up and went to bed, as it was about 9am my time and I'd gotten up at around 4 to call. I got up later that day, only to find another frantic message from Kat-- apparently they're not giving anyone the keys... because I don't have a guarantor* and haven't signed the lease. But wait, hold on, I did both of those things back in April.
I can't say for SURE that they lost my paperwork and then pretended they didn't, but I certainly have suspicions. However, it turned out while getting my paperwork redone that my guarantor couldn't be a guarantor anyway (d'oh). So now I have no signature, am down $1200, and nobody to be my guarantor. Fuck. So I ended up calling a different office and talking to an entirely different person who was much smarter and more capable than the first person I talked to, who managed to finangle it so I could not have a guarantor at all and just pay three months up front. Why having a guarantor at all is necessary, I have no idea, but everyone got to move in just fine and everything was solved. Except for the fact that it took four days and my sleep cycle is beyond fucked. How did these people manage to run an empire again?
* someone who signs a piece of paper saying that you will pay your rent. I have no idea why this is necessary. I assume it's purely to add another layer of useless suffering on the already-suffocating morass that forms the bureaucracy that is somehow the UK government.
