Drowning in Bad Service

So the first floor of my house flooded last Wednesday, due to a hose bib bursting inward through the drywall of my downstairs bathroom on a 4-degree morning. See, living in Manhattan for 15 months ruined me for home ownership. I forgot to turn the valve off before winter began. I thought about it in Novemer but thought it was too early, then I simply forgot.

The water pumped furiously into the house for god knows how long—but long enough that it left an inch of standing water in the bathroom, standing water in the laundry, water running out through the garage down the driveway (that's what those streaks in the snow were!), and a completely soaked Berber carpet that lined the floor of my big rec room. So, no TV for a week. Aaaaagh.

I honestly didn't think it would take very long to get my rec room back to a TV-viewable state. I mean, I've never been flooded before. But this company that I'm dealing with, ServPro, has done everything in their power to prolong my agony. And where they couldn't screw this up, mother nature gladly kicked in to pick up the slack.

All of this happened just weeks after I finally finished getting my house "done" after the move to MD from NY (last January), starting a new job (February) the closing and moving (March), the decorating, deliveries and unpacking (April – June), the horrid contract job on the deck, fence and patio (June-July), the extensive landscaping (July-August), the measuring and installation of the window blinds (October), the structural repairs to the stairs (November), and the cleanup from that whole mess (December). I was finally done and could relax a bit.

So my house floods. Not to mention, the disaster happened just two days before I was expecting company for the weekend in my newly finished home. Now my nephews would have to sleep on the hard-wood floors instead of the Berber carpet.

Obviously, my luck hasn’t changed.

On Wednesday, the day of the disaster, ServPro gave me a two-hour window when they'd show up and start removing the water from the bottom floor of my house. They showed up hours late and didn't finish up until after 7:00PM. On Thursday they agreed to come out between 1 and 3PM the following Monday to put down new carpet pad and reinstall the Berber carpet. I made arrangements with my job to be home for that. I didn't think I could live through the weekend with the mess (furniture stacked up in the foyer, the TV all unplugged, bookshelves emptied and moved, Martin's litter boxes moved to the living room, no easy chair to come home and relax in, the carpet pulled up, and industrial fans and other equipment running all over the downstairs, etc.), but I decided Monday was better than later.

As usual, nothing works out like I plan. On Friday, after I'd left work, ServPro left me a voicemail message saying they had to cancel for Monday and reschedule. When I got the message, I thought I was going to have a cow. You have to understand how hard it is for us anal-retentives to live with things being undone or out of place. This was a living hell for me. By the time I tried to call them back, they were closed for the weekend. Of course.

This was reminiscent of the stair repair guy, who left me a message on a Friday night saying they were planning on setting up their wood saw in my garage the next Monday morning for the job that took them seven weeks to get right, even after coming over on four separate occasions to measure. There was no way I was going to let an electric saw be set up indoors, but I couldn't get a hold of the guy to tell him that he needed to come up with another plan of how to manage the saw in the Monday morning drizzle. I'd already made plans to be off work Monday morning. Sure enough, they covered every single item in my garage with saw dust. We won't even get into their failure to clean it up as promised and how the "clean-up" consisted of dumping dustpans of saw dust directly into my trash can instead of bagging it (which I discovered a week later).

Anyway, I did get a hold of ServPro on Saturday. At first they hemmed and hawed as to the reason for canceling my Monday appointment. Finally, I got a bitchy supervisor named Tammy on the phone who explained to me that because they had so many jobs lined up it was easier for them to go pick up all the padding at once. Easier for them. The fact that I'd rearranged my work schedule and my house was a mess and I couldn't watch "Grey's Anatomy" on Thursday wasn't of any concern to them. I even offered to go pick up my padding. She was steadfast in her denial of any request I made.

I nearly went ballistic. It didn't matter how much I begged, they weren't going to keep our appointment. I even told the girl, "Before I moved to Maryland, I've never lived any place where so many businesses cancel appointments on me." It truly is unbelievable here. She didn't care. She rescheduled me for 8:30AM today.

So, Sunday I dragged the huge heavy TV stand out of the bathroom across the unattached yet dry, lumpy carpeting downstairs, plugged in the TV and re-wired my A/V setup. Then I managed to somehow roll my easy chair into the rec room too. I had my "comfort zone" back. Somehow that made me feel better, and that was all I needed. I could now live with the mess knowing that "Brothers & Sisters" would get recorded on Sunday night.

On Monday, (after finding out that my immigrant mailman had returned all three of my W-2's and I couldn't do my taxes as planned), I called a plumber who agreed to come out between 12 and 4PM today to repair the busted pipe. I was all set. I even lined up a drywall guy for later. I was supposed to call him after the plumber left to tell him how big the new hole was, then we'd schedule time for me to miss more work for him to come out.

Tuesday morning it started snowing. The snow turned to sleet and ice in the afternoon, and the entire state of Maryland started closing down around 1:30PM. Schools and businesses closed. The laser hair clinic called to cancel my 6PM appointment. I left work at 3:00.

We were under a winter storm watch, and I knew exactly what that meant: my carpet would not be reinstalled today.

Sure enough, it sleeted and snowed all night and everything remained iced over and closed today. I awoke to the sound of ice pellets hitting the windows. It took me an hour just to shovel my driveway this afternoon in the 40-mph winds. Earlier in the day, when Tammy at ServPro called to cancel, I just laughed. We both laughed. In fact, neither of us could stop laughing for a minute. I'd already had my nervous breakdown on Saturday, and I had my favorite chair back, so I didn't care anymore.

Now I'm rescheduled for Friday 1-3:00. Plumber is rescheduled for that afternoon too. But I'm not holding my breath. Who knows what will happen next.

Gee, is hurricane season over?