Disorganised Chaos.

Never again! Apart from eventually moving into my renovated house at the end of the year, I am never, ever, going to voluntarily put myself through this again. It has been, exhausting, time consuming, frustrating, irritating & utterly beyond my control. I will go out in a box to the great beyond.

All my "control freak" best efforts at having a plan & a system failed miserably. I packed everything apart from fragiles. I had sorted the fragiles into storage or rental groups. I had clearly marked boxes with a S or R. I had put a green sticker on furniture etc to go to the rental & a red sticker on stuff to go to storage. It didn't work. Stuff has disappeared into the Big Yellow storage room & will never be seen again until my house is ready for habitation. Even food! Nothing fresh though I hope.

The rental is very nice, as is the landlord. The area is in a quiet rabbit warren & the neighbours I have met are lovely. There is a garden, with birds! Headington is a bustling & lively area of Oxford.

There are just so many ongoing issues, mostly related to switching.

I am used to a landline. Yes, I know the world has moved on & I do have a 4g mobile. But I am used to broadband & access to the internet on my desktop. Yes, I know I can get all that on my mobile. (Except when the transmitter goes down with an unplanned outage - Must change my provider. Their customer service is dreadful.) 

The switch to Plusnet didn't happen as it should have done the day before I moved in. The rental had Virgin who appear to have disconnected the BT line to the house. Presumably they don't want people to switch! So I had to wait for Plusnet, Openreach & a private contractor Dig Team to communicate effectively to put a line to the house & a phone master socket in the house. The delay was mostly the Dig Team, who are obviously very busy. I'm finally on line, & have a landline phone for my care alarm today - 17 days after I expected. 

I am, delightfully, a "Welfare Case" because of my medical conditions, my age, my Careline & the Monitor which connects my pacemaker directly to the hospital when I'm in bed. Plus the fact that I live alone. That supposedly makes me a priority, urgent case. It didn't seem urgent to me as I waited day after day. Had I fallen or had a stroke, no one would have known.

Similarly, with my energy provider. I switched to Octopus 8 days after moving in. I hadn't realised how much notice you have to give to switch - So my fault. I also didn't realise that the rental has a PayGo meter for electricity. There is a plastic stick you insert in the meter. Topping up is a pain. There aren't many places you can do it. Now I have to wait until the 2nd July for smart meters. Obviously they are very busy too.

Moving into a new home means dealing with little problems like not being able to get the heating or the cooker to work. I didn't have very much information to help. There is an Inventory, but I couldn't read it on my mobile - That's a job for this weekend. 

I discovered that the back door wouldn't lock. It was open when I collected the keys. It took a locksmith an hour & a half to sort out this week. He wasn't impressed with the door. 

The cold water pressure downstairs suddenly soaked me, then the water turned brown, then the pressure disappeared. Then, when my son in law moved the cleaning materials around under the sink looking for a tap, (there isn't one), suddenly the pressure reverted to normal. None of us understand why. I'm just glad it's working.

My point is that all of this was very time consuming & quite stressful. I seem to be "fire fighting" all the time. I spent hours on my mobile going through phone menus & security questions, holding to dreadful music, being transferred from one department to another. But speaking to, generally, very nice helpful people - eventually. Some companies are actually unreachable if you don't have internet - iD Mobile & Openreach for example. On the other hand some companies have stopped online chat & don't have an email address. The reason is Covid. But surely by now they should have adapted? It has been with us for 16 months.

The customer journey is not what it should be. For example I have 5 separate ID numbers for my internet / landline problem with Plusnet & have spoken to several different departments & numerous call people working from home. The amount  of information on the system each person has to assimilate about my issue is massive. I'm amazed they do so well & stay so calm & helpful.

It will all be solved, eventually. I know that. I can deal with it all. It has just been quite difficult.

It's a good job I've done it now when I'm 76 & reasonably "compos mentis". I do get quite tired though & there is definitely a limit to the amount of energy, mental & physical, that I have. I'm like the Duracell bunny advert - the one with naff batteries!