We have lived in San Antonio since 2006. Well, not technically San Antonio. To be more precise, we lived in Converse, which is a little known suburb of San Antonio. Converse is a suburb for the not-so-rich folks, who cannot afford to live in the richer, more well known suburbs of San Antonio. How did we end up living in Converse, you ask? Well, that my love is a blog for another time! LOL For now you will have to suffer through the story of how we came NOT to live in Converse.
My husband, being the licensed journeyman electrician that he is, works for a company that has offices in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston. Unfortunately, the idget who runs the San Antonio office has expertly run the business directly into the ground. He has even gone so far as to get the company blacklisted with most San Antonio contractors. Needless to say, that has made work in San Antonio for my husband well, a little scarce. So he's spent quite a lot of the last couple of years driving to job sites in Austin. That's an hour from San Antonio, IF you don't include traffic time. I work for Seton, which is also based in Austin. I work in the Seton clinic in Lockhart, TX - about an hour from Converse. And if I lived closer, I could pick up hours at some of the other Seton facilites in the Austin area. So after watching the gas prices climb higher and higher and higher, as well as languishing under our landlord's constant emails and drive-bys and phone calls and walk throughs, we began to entertain the idea that perhaps, just maybe, we should consider moving OUT of San Antonio. We had talked about living in the country for years, so we decided that buying some land somewhere south of Austin would be a totally fantastic idea!
Well, we ALL know how well my fantastic ideas usually turn out!
I started searching for property for us to buy. Then I checked our credit. We've fought and fought for years to fix our credit. We've paid off stuff, gotten rid of our credit cards, made payment arrangements on my defaulted student loans....in other words we've jumped through our proverbial butts to try and reach that golden score that proclaims "YOU HAVE GOOD CREDIT" *insert bugling here*
Well, guess what folks? We bit ourselves in that proverbial butt. Apparently, by paying off everything and getting rid of our credit cards we did NOT clean up our credit. We just dismissed it. After all these years and all that hard work, our credit score is actually LOWER than it used to be. According to the mortgage broker that I talked to, by not having any credit cards we have shown "that we can't pay back credit." WHAT?!?!? And here I thought we were showing that we were responsible by paying our debts and not taking on additional credit...my bad! Turns out we should've borrowed our faces blue!
We've scrimped and saved and just when we thought we could finally get a loan, we get blown out of the water. We found a fantastic place that we wanted SO BADLY!!! 22 acres all to ourselves!!! But after packing and shopping and working our asses off to buy this place, turns out we STILL can't get a mortgage! We've spent the last 15 years paying someone else's mortgage, in the way of rent, but we supposedly can't "afford" a mortgage - at least according to the bank!
So I had my house all packed up and nowhere to go. Turns out, we didn't have a place to move TO. We couldn't buy, and we had not even looked for a rental because we were so sure we WOULD be able to buy the 22 acres we'd found. But our lease was up, and we had already given notice to our rotten land-stalker. I mean, land-LORD sorry. Then, right in the middle of my panicked break-down, my girlfriend's husband tells us about a (mostly) reputable double-wide *woo hoo - a mobile home - how WILL I contain my excitement?* Ok, so I drove out to see it. It wasn't like I had a ton of options, you know? But I won't regale you with details of the double-wide here. That's for a whole 'nother blog, trust me! Suffice it to say, the price was right and the landlady was a sweet little old lady who didn't even want a lease. Done. But then the REAL problems began...
Nothing can ever be easy, can it? In the midst of this nasty little summer heatwave cum drought, our electric bill had skyrocketed to over $300. They also would not give me a letter of credit for the new electric company. So, add another $275 for a deposit and turn-on fee (yes, they really did charge me a $25 "turn on fee".) The new house has propane, which was a lesson in itself, since I've never had a house with propane. Did you know that propane sells for almost as much as gasoline?!? Neither did I!!! It's $2.99 PER GALLON. And apparently, no company wants to drive their big ol' tanker truck out to fill up my little propane tank unless I buy a MINIMUM of 100 gallons. There goes another $300 out the window. You want TV? In the COUNTRY? HA! Ok, we can get you TV, but it's gonna cost you! You want internet you say? Now you're just being all big city uppity, aren't ya? You're gonna have to go satellite if you want them big city amenities! And those were just the costs of moving INTO the NEW PLACE! Now let's talk about the cost of moving OUT OF the OLD PLACE!
The carpet cleaners (who HAD to be professionals, per my lease with the land-stalker) charged me $316 to come clean the carpets in a completely empty house. Yeah, never EVER use Green Tree Steamers (www.greentreesteamers.com) if you live in San Antonio! I purchased one of those local internet deals from them - 5 rooms for $49. Ok, well we had 5 rooms upstairs, so that only left 3 more downstairs to pay extra for. I had already pre-treated the "pet stains" (stupid little boy Maltese!) with this very expensive but very good enzymatic cleaner. Now I don't know what kind of math skills you have, but my math skills did NOT add $16 each for 3 extra rooms, plus $49 for the original deal, to come up with a bill of OVER THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS! And to think, they didn't even kiss me!
Now let's talk about Pack Rat. I thought, hey....only $128 a month for a 16 foot connex is a deal! They quoted about a $50 charge for delivery and set-up, and then only about $50-60 for picking up the unit and taking it to my new residence. Have you folks priced UHaul type trucks lately? I have! And man, are those suckers EXPENSIVE! And they run on diesel, which is presently going for the bargain basement price of only $4 dollars A GALLON! At 10 MILES TO THE GALLON! So I thought the Pack Rat connex was a brilliant idea! *Here's where I tell you once again - we ALL know how well my fantastic ideas usually turn out!*
Well, I packed the crap out of that Pack Rat! I dared anyone to fit so much as a matchbook into that sucker! Then, two weeks before the end of the month (and the end of our lease) I called Pack Rat and said, "Okay guys! Come get my unit!" *yes, that's me standing there in my driveway, hands on hips, looking quite proud of myself, and dare I say maybe even a bit smug?*
Sure thing ma'am. *insert scary music here* We'll be happy to schedule that for you! Someone from the San Antonio office will be calling you to firm up the time and day. Oh, and that will cost you $258.39 for us to pick the unit up and deliver it out to your new residence in Lockhart, and then only another $243.57 to return for it once you've emptied it. *I warned you it was going to get scary.* Once my sons revived me, and got me up off the floor, we waited for the local office to call us. And we waited.....
And waited.....
And waited....
And waited.....
(You getting the idea, here?) I called back and called back and called back. I waited, and called back, and then waited some more. Finally, two days before the end of the month (and so two days before the end of my lease) the idiot at the 1-800-Pack-Rat number says, "Well it looks here like it's been scheduled to be picked it. Yep, they'll be out there first thing the morning of the twelfth." *Here come my sons with the defibrillator again.* THE TWELFTH?!?!?!?!?!? Have I not mentioned REPEATEDLY that my lease expires on the THIRTY-FIRST?!?!?!? Are you telling me that it takes ONE MONTH for you people to get your shit together and pick up a unit that it took you only two days notice to DELIVER?!?!?!?
Apparently, YES. Since my nifty little Pack Rat connex continued to sit in the driveway in Converse on the 30th...and the 31st....and the 1st....and the 2nd.... At which point, the land-stalker was having absolute conniption fits! And CHARGING ME! For every blasted damn day that the stupid Pack Rat connex continued to live in the driveway, the over-bearing hateful ass land-stalker was charging me RENT! FOR THE DRIVEWAY! Never mind that I left his house in better shape than it was when he rented it to me. Never mind that I tore down old, moldy wallpaper and applied fresh plaster and paint. Never mind that I put a decorative paint finish on the walls. Never mind that I left custom made shelving in TWO different bathrooms because it went with the afore-mentioned Venetian plaster and custom finishes! Never mind that I paid over THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS so that his carpets were spotless! NEVER MIND THAT HIS FOUNDATION ROTTING HOUSE WAS IN PRISTINE CONDITION READY AND WAITING FOR THE NEW TENANTS WITH NO DOWN TIME!
That's when my tantrums started. I wrote ALL OVER Pack Rat's FaceBook wall with disparaging comments about how it takes a MONTH to get a unit picked up, and how it will cost you almost a thousand dollars to rent and then relocate a unit. And I left a nasty little message on their voicemail about how I would be arriving at their San Antonio office first thing the next morning with the local news crew to document my shoddy experience. Lo and behold, my unit got picked up! Of course, it's STILL not at my new house, but at least it's not RENTING OUT THE DRIVEWAY at my old house either! But they are damn sure sticking to that date of the 12th for the delivery. Oh, and the amount to be charged! They refuse to adjust my bill, even though they cost me 3 days rent!
So after all of that, what do you think the lesson learned here is? Actually, I learned several lessons. Allow me to list them for you:
#1) NEVER EVER EVER rent a Pack Rat unit!
#2) NEVER EVER EVER use Green Tree Steamers for your carpet cleaning needs!
#3) NEVER EVER EVER rent from Ed Houser of Lighthouse Realty in San Antonio, TX!
#4) NEVER EVER EVER pay off all of your credit cards in some misguided attempt to "clean up" your credit score!
And last but not least, #5) NEVER EVER EVER listen to one of my fantastic ideas!
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