Service Master Disaster

Last Tuesday at work I received a phone call from our tenant “the toilet has overflowed, it’s really disgusting, I’m not sure what to do.” I then tried to get a hold of my plumber while dealing with 60 kids; after I tried a few times without success, I seemed to forget about the problem. I returned home to the smell and Nola telling me the tenant had emailed her, once again I was faced with the poo. I went downstairs to assess the damage. GROSSERS! Luckily my tenant is still paying rent but she has moved out of the apartment. I called the Drain Brain; they came with in 30 minutes, snaked the pipes, revealing a few tree roots in the system. I payed him $300 and sent him on his way.

The next morning I called another company to come clean up and disinfect the mess. They tell me they will be there “after lunch.” Finally at 3:00 they call and say they are arriving in 10 minutes. Allow me to set the scene. A yellow van with the company logo pulls in the driveway and a blue minivan (old and without a logo) arrives behind it and hangs out on the street. A man and a woman get out of the yellow van to start their work. The woman is wearing high heels and a skirt, which I found to be a bizzare way to dress to clean raw sewage, but, hey who am I to judge? They measure the space give me an estimate. I head back to work and they work on the problem at hand.

On Saturday I have a meeting with them to retrieve the fans that were drying the space and pay them for cleaning up. We had been up the whole night before ’cause my sister in law went into labor, my brother had a seizure while she was in labor, and Max would not sleep in his crib so we tentatively slept with him in the bed. The clean-up company people are there when I arrive, same scene as before with the yellow logo-ed van and a blue mini-van. At this point I realize that the blue mini-van is associated with the clean-up crew. I wonder why the driver is in his van watching them work? Who is he? What is he doing? The worker retrieves his fans and I ask him “How much do I owe you?” He hands me the bill for $738.00. I look at the bill and say “$738.00 ????????!!!!!!!!! Your estimate was $250.00.” He replies, “You have to talk to the guy in the van about that.” I storm over to the van to find this 500 pound man sitting in his van with a blanket covering him, an oxygen tank and smoking a cigar (later Nola told me that one of his pinky nails was painted pink?????). I ask him and he says there is drying time. I went totally ballistic, throwing my check book  and pen down, yelling, and stomping. I went inside to consult with trusted elders who said I didn’t have to pay him on the spot. Then I went back outside to yell at him some more. As I go out I see Nola talking to the guy, I come over and scream “$738.00!!!!!!”. She says “did we contact the insurance company?” This is apparently what he had suggested to her. This made me fly even more off the handle. This was confined to the bathroom and a corner of the rug, no need for insurance. “Oh, is this what your running,” I scream, “insurance fraud???” I told him I was not paying him a penny and to get off my property. Nola talks to him so more, “he wants to know if we will at least give him a deposit, he says you wouldn’t sign the contract?” “Uh, what contract??? He never gave me one to sign.” He also told her I was hard to get a hold of , wouldn’t return phone calls and was difficult to deal with. I  said I will pay him $300.00 but he is not getting another penny. I storm out write him and check and in the memo line I wrote PAID IN FULL!! I WILL NOT GIVE YOU ANY MORE MONEY. I ceremonisoly throw it in his fifthy van and yell “Get off my property!!!”

 My lawyer friend came over for a hike later that afternoon and said writing that in the memo line was excatly the right thing to do. If he cashes it, it’s all over.

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