Schooled

Got a 101 in how business runs out here and it was brutal.

I've been MIA for the past few weeks since my first couple posts because I've been spending most of my time searching for a permanent place and getting the essentials setup at the pad. I'm only booked for the month here at the hotel and had to lock down a place ASAP since I'm about to head back to the US tomorrow and preferred not to return back to the Dubai homeless. So here's my rant. Sorry, this is going to be long and is going to be a straight up dump of crap:

Housing agents

Agent #1: I checked out some places the first time I came to visit. My friend/colleague's agent showed me around. When I moved here, she unfortunately wasn't around so she referred me to her colleague. I emailed this dude a month before I came over to let him know I was coming. No response. Emailed again a week before. Again, no response. I call this guy up a week after I arrive to setup some apartment viewings and he's like sure let's view on Monday. We check out 3 places. The first place we checked out was a furnished apartment. I was perusing through the kitchen and happened to open the fridge door and gagged at the smell and sight of old and moldy ass food in the fridge. Nice. The next 2 apartments were decent, but he had to go since it was dinner time, so I'm like cool, can you setup some more viewings for next week? He's like yeah yeah, Wed or Thurs, don't worry about it. Wasn't quite trusting this guy still so I called him early the following week, no response. Waited for a few more days didn't hear back. So I decided to do check out some of the other larger agencies...

Agent #2: I had done a tone of research online and had a specific area in mind (Dubai Marina) and actually at that point had a sense of which buildings I might want to stay in so I made a list and reached out to all the agents tied to the properties. One of the agencies came up quite a bit so I reached out and hooked up with an agent, this British lady. I lined up like 5 or 6 places to check out. She met me up at the first place and we bull dozed through the remaining places. She didn't seem very interested in selling me on any of the places, rather just getting me to see all the places, which was somewhat okay. Got a really weird vibe from her though, as if me asking questions was somehow wrong but I thought whatever. When we finished up I was going to hop a cab and she asks me if I wanted a ride back. I'm like sure, i'm just over in this area (5-10 min drive away, max). 5 min into the drive she's like oh, i didn't realize this was so far away. This is really out of my way. And she said that several times when finally I was like well i'm really sorry I inconvenienced you. Fortunately by the time she had gone off on a little rant of how far it was, we were already there, dumb batch.

Agent #3: By this point, i'm getting pretty f-in fed up with agents and since I had seen a number of buildings and already had an idea of which buildings I wanted to live in, I just decided to search by buildings at this point and not continue to search with agents. I spent a full day last week and basically looked at like 8 units across these 2 buildings I was interested in. The unit I actually ended up being interested in was being brokered by another agency. I called the dude up and he pretty much told me all the open units in the building that he had and just told me to go up and check them out myself, so I was like cool, no hassle dealing with an agent and I can take my time checking out the places. I decided to pursue one of the places that I checked out and so I hit up the agent and asked him about the availability. He's like oh you can move in by tomorrow if you wanted, so I'm like cool, sounds pretty painless. (remember that quote)

So I go ahead and put a deposit on the place to hold it while I was waiting for my loan from my company to come through. Rent here is usually paid by the annual amount in 1 to 4 checks. With less checks, you get some more negotiating leverage. So I worked out an interest free loan with my company to front my annual rent in 1 check. For this place it was 65K AED and with the 1 check we negotiated down to 60K AED (equiv aprox to $1,350/month). So I put the deposit down on Sunday. 

Agent tells me he'll have the place painted/cleaned immediately. I go in to sign the contract on Wednesday, pay the annual rent, and we agree I can move in on Saturday at 9am. The agent had the keys but apparently he was out sick so I wasn't able to get the keys and no confirmation on whether the place was cleaned or not. I finally speak with the agent and he says we'll either meet at the place on Saturday at 9am or I should come to the office to pick up the keys, he'll let me know. Call and text him on Friday, no response. Call and text him on Saturday morning, no response. Harass his secretary who finally gets in touch with him and he calls me to meet up at noon to pickup the keys from the office but that the painting and cleaning had NOT been done. The painting and cleaning was actually just starting on Saturday, so I'm like whatever, i'll just throw my stuff in there later on in the evening. Get the keys from him and head off to check out the apartment and see how the painting was going before heading to IKEA to do some furni shopping. Painters were almost finished so I call up the agent, ask him if there were cleaning people coming, hes like naw the painters will clean up everything, so I'm like coo. Head to IKEA to lock down some essential stuff. I head home to get online so I could get the Utilites (Electric and Water) setup as soon as possible. 

Dubai Electric & Water Authority

First, I don't have the PO BOX number of the building. There are NO addresses in the UAE. Did you get that? NO ADDRESSES, so they rely on landmarks and POBOXes (another story for another day). Agent doesnt have the PO BOX of the building. I can't find the PO BOX anywhere online or on the contract. I call up the building manager who doesn't have it either. Gives me the front desk number of the building but gives me the wrong number. Call him back several times and he doesn't pick up. Finally harass my agent to get me the PO BOX number and he gets it for me finally.

Secondly, I don't have some apartment specific information which is tied to the previous utilities account. Gotta call up the agent for that info.

Finally, try to submit my application and pay the deposit online (which was supposed to be quick and easy) and my CC isn't accepted. Call up the support line and they said to wait 24 hours and then call back in, fine whatever. 

Get a text from the agent later on telling me the painting and cleaning had been done, smiley face. So i head over to check out the place and to move most of my stuff from the hotel to the apartment while Kathryn was around. The floors and been swept of the paint flakes but low and behold the bath tubs, toilets, kitchen had not been cleaned at all, SWEET. I call the agent to bitch about the state of the apartment and he asks me to just hire some cleaners and he'll reimburse me. Pretty fed up at this point so i'm like fine whatever.

Next day I call up the utilities company and they give me some BS about how I need to create a brand new account and then activate it (contrary to my original impression that I just had to activate). Call up the agent, he says they're BS and advises me to go into the office. Okay, head to the utilities office. At this point, pretty fed up with all the back and forth and I want to make sure my utilities get setup before I leave for the US in less than a week so I hitup the ATM and get a bunch of cash. Get to the office and start to get signed up when the guy tells me there's an outstanding balance on the apartment, omfg GOOT. Alright, whatever, i'll just pay it off. finally get through the paperwork and it's time to pay the total sum. Dude tells me they can't accept credit cards, only cash and checks. Good thing I got like $400 before I headed over! So I pay the guy and he owes me like 72 AED in change. He fumbles through the drawer and pays me 70 AED. Sorry, don't have 2 dirhams. Am I surprised? At this point, not really. Anyways, he tells me my water and electric would be turned on in 24 hours.

Next day, I head over in the afternoon, the electricity and water had not been turned on so I called into the support line. They put in a request to have someone check it out. I head back to the hotel and call them up around the time the support line told me they would have fixed it. No sir, we won't let you know when it's on, we'll only call you if there's a problem. Okay so how do I know when to go check? Not sure. Great. So i head back to the apartment and finally the electricity and water are on. But now I find that several of the bulbs are out in the ceiling lights, which are at least 15 feet high. I hitup the front desk of the building and after some ghey back and forth (I don't want to get into) I finally get the right light bulbs and get them replaced.

That's my shitty ass rant about my apartment search (and i probably left out some further shatty details). I'd be surprised and maybe a little disturbed if any of you read through every single word of that without skimming.

To quote Shalb's: "WHY CHINA DUBAI?!?!?!"

I'm splitting off the happier news, pleasant commentary, and interesting pictures for my next post. Better posts to definitely come, lots of good stuff to share.

-BLT (extra toasted and extra burnt) out