Thursday 3 September 2009

I [heart] RACQ

I figured I should share my mini adventure, seeing as it was probably the most exciting thing that happened to me all day (because let's face it, grocery shopping definitely lacks the usual thrill of retail therapy).

This morning, we got up, as usual, I hung the nappies out while Pete changed the baby, I fed her, Pete got her wheet-bix ready, I gave her that while Pete got ready for school. 8.15am rolls around, and it's time to take Pete to school (I have mentioned that he's on prac, right??). We both head out the door, get to the car (which is parked out the back, not in the garage) and I say to Pete, "Oh, I've forgotten the keys". A second goes past, we look at each other, "OH CRAP!" (well actually we may have used a different poo-related curse word). Yes that's right folks, the keys are inside the house. The locked house. We are stuck outside, with a locked car. Pete's due at school in ten minutes. I'm wearing my pajamas.

We frantically ran around the outside of the house (with a lot of nervous giggles and "oh I'm sooooo sorry Pete!!!"'s from me) checking that everything is actually locked. (un)fortunately my father's "there are 15 points of entry into this house make sure all of them are locked" moments of my childhood (and trust me, there were many, many of these moments) had worked at a deeper level than even he could ever have imagined and our house was fully safe and secure. Pete started pulling out flyscreens and trying to force open windows ("Oh Lordy Pete whatever you do puh-lease don't go breaking any windows!!"), even the laundry window which I'm sure neither of us would fit through anyway (and Mayana isn't quite skilled enough to solve this problem just yet). No avail. Our home is burglar -proof.. well so long as the burglar doesn't want to do any actual damage to the propery in any case.

We decide that Pete will walk to school, I'll go to our neighbour's (luckily we've finally gotten to know one of them!) and use her phonebook, text him the school's number to tell them he's going to be late, ring the real estate and see if they'll let me back in.

Off he goes, and off I go, in my pajamas, to the neighbour's house. Now this is all well and good, but it's not like I can actually just walk next door. It won't make any sense, but to get to my neighbour's unit (in the same block as mine) I have to walk right around the entire street block.. not just down the unit driveway. Nice.

I knock on her door, tell her the situation. She informs me that she got locked out of her unit yesterday too! She rang our (horrible) property manager, who told her that it would cost around $80 for them to come and let her into her house! That's $80 that she (and I) didn't have lying around for such a thing. Luckily for her, her partner was able to break in through the roof. Yes through the roof! He pulled off tiles and got down into their ceiling! We don't have such luxury, our roof is colourbond.

Then I had a brainwave. Our spare house-keys are in the car! The neighbour and I, both in pajamas with babies on our hips, treck back and attempt to break into the car with a coat hanger. No luck.

Another brainwave. RACQ!!!! I wondered if it would be kosher to ask them to let me into my car so I could get into my house.. but only for about .025 of a second. I rang, explained, they sent someone out... He only took about 20 minutes, and it was the same guy that rescued me last week (he's fast becoming my hero). He had me in the car within 20 seconds, where I rescued my house keys and finally got back into the house! Yay!

So that's the long-winded story of how I got locked out of my house, in my pajamas, and was rescued (again) by the RACQ (and saved myself $80).

The second time RACQ has saved me in less than a week. And that's why I [heart] RACQ :-)

2 comments:

  1. It's such a joke that real estate agents want to charge you $80 for them to come out and let you into the house. The property manager doesn't earn ANYWHERE near that per hour...it's just a scam so that you'll figure out another way to get inside, and they don't have to get off their buts to come and help you out.

    (I used to work in real estate. It's one of the new policies that drive me nuts!)

    Glad it all worked out in the end :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Zoey
    From all of us here at RACQ, I would like to say you're welcome!

    We appreciate you telling your story, I'm sure we've all had one of those days. We're glad that we were able to assist you.

    Regards
    Gavin Watts
    Customer Relations Manager
    RACQ

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!!

 

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