The House That Blogging Did Not Build and Other Stories

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One of the reasons why I was so busy since last month was that I moved in to my new home sweet home. Yes, this promdi is now a proud owner of a brand new house and lot. As the title of this post says, this house was not built by blogging but by my savings from my offline rakets, a small salary loan and a humongous loan with Pag-IBIG Fund.

I’ve been living here in Bacolod City for five years already so I think it’s about time that I have my own place. Think of all the money I wasted renting which I could have paid for down payment for a house much earlier.

I moved in last October and it’s not a perfect house but I love the thought that this is mine. You know how it is with us Filipinos, we’re full of pamahiin. I was told that a house should not be empty during Christmas and New Year. So, here I am, I spent Christmas away from our home in Iloilo for the first time and will be spending New Year in my new house too.

This picture was taken before I moved in but the house still looks the same. I haven’t really made a lot of improvements except for the curtains and the temporary cyclone wire fence I installed. What can you expect? I’m already broke.

Owning a house is not easy. The paying is the easiest part. You gotta have a lot of patience with the people from the developer, carpenters, and utility service personnel.

When my charm fails, I turn to my natural ability to be bitchy. There are times when you really have to be angry in order for them to pay attention. Or you can drop in the names of the people you know or calling somebody you know from inside, which I really hate but I realized that in our culture, sometimes you really have to.

Story 1: Sorry dude, you won’t get my money.

I took a leave of absence from the office so that I can be present for the installation of my water meter. I already completed the requirements, already paid the fee and had the property inspected. In short everything’s all set. Lo and behold! When the technicians arrived they told me I have to make an additional payment since the main water line is across the street.

I told the technician they could have informed me ahead and isn’t that why there’s an inspection of the property before payments are made? Aren’t their inspectors doing their job? He told me to just pay at their office.

I can smell something fishy. I know he must be expecting me to offer to pay at that moment. I’m sorry dude, I will not let you get the better of me. I visited their office and told the staff I’m not going to pay for something that I don’t know what for.The staff was very apologetic and said they will have the property reinspected.

I was already impatient but I waited for them to call me. Indeed, I still have an additional payment to make for the labor. It was just an additional P600+.  But that should have already been computed after they have inspected the property. I thought it must be their usual practice of the unscrupulous technicians so that an impatient client would just pay extra rather than visit their office and go through the whole process again . This was the same experience from a fellow home owner who paid an addition P1,500 so that he will no longer have to visit their office.

Story 2: Warning: I’m high voltage.

My electricity was schedule for connection but I was not able to visit the property to check so I called the electric company. They told me it wasn’t connected yet because they went out of stock for the meter. I was complaining about it at the office so an office mate who know somebody from the accounting section offered to follow it up for me.

I was told by the person that it was already installed. Grrr…. then why did those installation guys told me otherwise? She told me to just check the property. When I checked, there was already the meter but there was no power inside the house. The electrician of the developer told me it has something to do with the main line.

Again I called to follow-up and was told the line was not “energized”, whatever that means. So again, they had it scheduled. When I checked, there wasn’t power yet so I again followed-up and I was informed that the technicians are scheduled to visit other areas and that they will visit my area the following week. Then the engineer from the “energizer” section blamed the engineer from the installation section why the case was not referred to them immediately.

To this I really got angry. I told him in a raised voice that why in the world would the customer suffer for their inefficiencies? Why does a customer have to follow-up again and again and then will be referred to another section?

I told him that if I will have no electricity by tomorrow then he will no longer be the right person for me to air my complain. Which I was really going to do. To this, the engineer told me that it will no longer be necessary. That he will personally see to it that I will have electricity by tomorrow. He asked for my cell number and told me he will update me. He did, almost every 30 minutes. I got electricity before the day ended.

Tagged as: Buying a House, pag-IBIG