Last summer holiday in Greenwich
Our family planned to have a calm and a peaceful holiday with our daughters in London this summer. We had numerous important things to settle in London within the two weeks we had. Firstly, to admit our younger girl in a boarding school and spend some time with our elder girl as she already lives & studies in London by herself while we work abroad. Then to buy a place for us to live once we return to UK. That was our firm plan. Hoping all will go well, we rented a holiday flat at 12, Park Vista, Greenwich by email. We got to London all happy. There was a nice Australian lady to meet us along with a Filipino maid who told us that the owners who live upstairs were on holiday and also the flat wasn't ready for us as the previous holiday makers didn't leave until late. We said, no problem, we will do some grocery shopping while you clean, and we will return in an hour.
When we returned the maid was still around. She was very nice. We sat in the living room waiting for her to finish. Once she had finished her work, she warned us about a problem with the electricity. We did not think it was that serious, but soon after when my husband had a shower, half the place had no electricity, all the switches went dead and we had to keep turning the trip switch on each time someone had a wash. We were very worried in case we would be electrocuted while having a shower. However, we put up with the problem and informed the maid. She called the owner who was on holiday abroad so we could speak to him. His response was "What can I do from here? " In other words, put up with the problem. Anyway the maid called the electrician so one of us had to stay in the flat every day for the electrician to come to try to solve the problem as the maid had left for her other work by then,
On the fifth day we could not get our hire car out of the garage as the electric door would not work. This was Friday and the start of a three day bank holiday week-end. It was nerve racking as we had to deliver our daughter to her new boarding school out of London on the Tuesday, and everything was closed for the next three days, i.e. there was no way to arrange an alternative car in time. Our daughter was a stranger to England, and had never been away from home before, so we were very worried that she would be very disturbed if we could not introduce her to her new school in a calm and timely manner. Only by the evening of the 6th day did we get access to our car, and only then because of the intervention of a friendly neighbour who brought his own electrician to help, i.e. with no help from the owners.
We had appointments with estate agents to see houses, many of which had to be cancelled as we had to rush to find taxis, buses and walked miles around London. Fortunately we had our car out in time to drive our daughter to her boarding school.
All this trouble had wasted nearly a week of our two week visit, made us all tired, and distraught.
My husband who works all over the developing countries as an expatriate had handled all kinds of situations but this time as this was most important for our family, he fell ill mentally and physically which made us extremely concerned about his health.
A few days before our holiday ended, the owners arrived and the wife came and in a most unsympathetic way said she apolpogised, and didn't expect these things to happen to us on our holiday. She pretended that there were no faults in the house even though her own electrician complained to us that he had warned her several times that there was a major electrical problem in the flat. And that the instant electric shower was dangerous. In fact, she refunded the entire amount of the rent but in a most ungracious manner. Throwing the checque through the letter box while we sat there. She and her husband her both acted rudely, didn't ever apologise decently. In fact when their own electricity was cut off he stormed down to complain to us! His wife called to him loudly saying she had given a full refund and we had nothing to complain about! Then they proposed to disturb us with more visits from the electrician as they were also being inconvenienced. But we refused to allow further disturbance and preferred to put up with the the problem as we had while they were away. The evening before we were due to leave, the man came around and warned us to leave early in the morning. They thought returning money would make up for their disgraceful behaviour, a ruined holiday and cancellation of important family business due to the time we had wasted with their problems. I do not think they should be allowed to own and rent out a holiday flat until they learn to behave and deal politely with people.
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