Almost Done Like a Dodo

M bought a copy of the Herald Sun on the last Saturday in December. We don’t buy newspapers regularly. I decided to read it a few days later and to my disbelief, I came across an article about the storage company where we rented a unit. Back in November, I posted about how our rented storage unit was broken into by its owner. That was the story we were fed and we believed them. Well, I personally didn’t quite believe that a mining hotshot would just break into my unit for no apparent reason but I didn’t want to rock the boat and thought that if we moved to the new unit (on a different level) offered to us, everything would return to normal. We have used this storage facility for a long, long time and we have always tried to pay our rent on time. There had been instances when we paid our rent a day or two late because M was too busy to get there to pay it himself.

A week or so after we moved our stuff to a slightly larger unit with a pretty auspicious number, we received an email requesting us to fill out a new contract. That was fine for us. Then we learned that we weren’t allowed to pay cash for the rent anymore. We had to pay via direct debit. We also learned that the storage facility would no longer open on the weekends. Now, that’s totally inconvenient for inner city residents like us. Imagine not being able to access one’s shed on the weekends. Since there was no other payment option, we reluctantly went along with paying via direct debit. Then we received a phone call from a lady telling M that he had filled in the wrong form and that they couldn’t find our details. We were asked to fill in another form and M did as he was told. I personally do not like internet banking, direct debit or credit cards. When it comes to using our hard earned money, I prefer a ‘concrete’ experience over an ‘abstract’ one. So, before Moosh sent off the second form, I photocopied it. I kept copies of all of the forms we had to fill. Guess what I noticed? The first and second Direct Debit Request forms were slightly different! I won’t go into great details here but was something fishy going on?

After I read the article at the end of December, I made the decision to move to another storage facility ASAP. We patiently waited for the ‘investments company’ to extract the rent for January and luckily it went without a glitch. With the rent paid till the end of the month, I called and emailed to let them know of our interest to move out. That went without much trouble also. Well, they did tell us that they won’t be refunding us any unused rent if we moved early. That was fine to us because I just wanted to be out of there. M and I spent two days moving out. On the second day of the move, we decided to have brekkie at McDonald’s before we start. M got hold of a copy of the day’s Herald Sun for restaurant patrons to read. When we got to page 39, I nearly choked on my hash brown. The headlines made me very angry. Up until just before that moment, I was actually feeling sad that we had to move out of a facility we had used for such a long time. After we read the article, we just wanted to rush out and start moving the rest of our stuff quickly. Because our car is small, we had to move four more loads before the move was completed. As we moved our stuff, we noticed that many units next to us were still occupied. These people probably aren’t aware of things going on behind the scene at this facility. We wouldn’t have known if we didn’t read these two articles in the newspapers. On the first day of our move, some people were moving out just like us but on the next day, we saw at least two parties moving in or dropping off more stuff to be stored. Bizarre! Maybe some people are just not bothered by what is going on. I am just glad that we had moved on our own terms. Imagine if everyone is asked to move out ASAP because the facility is shutting down suddenly. I can see tempers flaring because everyone wants to use the loading bays.