Monday 27 May 2013

Too Funny

DS found my blog and called and complained to the Midland Police (wrong police department for this area, hon... but thanks for letting me know where you are; good to know).

Have, at his request, fixed the one place where her actual name was included, which was, actually, in a direct quote from a police officer that actually knew her name - the one that called today had a different name for her, apparently.  Interesting - I suppose when one makes a habit of ripping people off, the use of a number of different names makes sense.

Funny how DS didn't have any hesitation to use our names to spread lies, but objects to having any of hers in any way associated with the truth, eh?  Funny - but again, not surprising.

Sunday 5 May 2013

Such a hater, I am :)

In response to a question about why it takes so long to get rid of bad tenants, posted in the Ontario Landlords' Association forum earlier this evening - or I guess yesterday evening, now, since it's 3:41 am (back hurts too much for sleeping), I replied that:

I don't know about other areas, but in ours, many of the delays are easily attributed to sheer stupidity and carelessness.
 
Oh, and to a total lack of shiving a git at both the Legalized Theft Board and the Sheriff's Office... cuz, you know... delays & costs don't matter because you'll "get an order" and that is supposed to mean something
.

My response hurted someone's feelings:

You know what, your are waaay TOO hostile, I explain the Legislation, I don't fuggin write it... I understand your frustration, and yep take alot of abuse from people like you... that's not saying I don't understand your frustration... I REALLY do, but don't kill the messenger o.k?


Since my comment was written in response to someone else's question and was not directed to this charming new participant who joined the forum to be helpful (but only if nobody says anything bad about the LTB and irks her because she takes it personally and she, apparently, thinks she is well within in her rights to show up in our forum and tell people what they are allowed to think/say cuz well, you know... she's the boss of the world, right?)  I hardly felt it worth responding to there... but I did offer to provide her with evidence re: stupid and careless.

She didn't take me up on it :)

But hey, this is my blog and I can write whatever I want here, right?

And since I can't sleep and can't focus enough to write coherent cover letters right now, figure I might as well blather on here for a bit and expand on my comment.

Examples of sheer stupidity & carelessness:

  1. initial hearing set for the wrong location (i.e. someone didn't know which area of the province our town is in, and didn't bother to check - just arranged the hearing to be heard in Mississauga cuz that is where the application (correctly) was sent to).
  2. when the tenant complained, the date and location was changed. No one, however, bothered to a/ ask for my consent to the change (as per their own supposed rules which only apply to landlords, not to tenants, obviously, in spite of what they actually say) or b/ ensure that we were notified. If I hadn't called them on another matter and if it hadn't actually come up in that conversation, I would have driven 2 hours one way for a hearing that had been cancelled. But hey, no worries...I am a landlord, therefore I am independently wealthy and can afford such nonsense, right?
  3. When they did change the date, it was from a day that I could attend, i.e. a Monday, to a day when I could not, at least not without cancelling class for more than 80 students who are entitled to the instruction they pay for. Since, when I submitted my applications, I also included a polite letter explaining my limitations re: availability and even going so far as to include a copy of my official timetable, and since, although not as often, they DO hold hearings on other days of the week even in Hicksville, I really did not think it unreasonable to ask that they at least TRY to accommodate me. Not only did they refuse to do so, they went so far as to schedule our hearings on consecutive Thursdays. Rather than putting them altogether, they thought I would like to force my 80+ students to miss classes 3 weeks in a row.
  4. It took repeated phone calls, tears, and finally an all-out tantrum before I was able to get someone to actually listen and - once I had obtained written consent from the squatters (because the landlord cannot change the hearing without consent; only tenants may do so) - to do something about it. Sort of.
  5. But first, I had to fax in my request for rescheduling (at the very least put all 3 hearings on the same damn day and preferably NOT a Thursday). I did exactly I was directed - and the answer was NO. The person who was in charge of rescheduling refused to do so. She left a message on my answering machine telling me that since she had already rescheduled the hearing for "me" she would not do it again ("me" being the tenant, not me, of course). Oh, and by the way, they had not received my paperwork regarding the nonpayment of rent, so wouldn't be scheduling THAT one at all.  (Except that they had not only received it, they had sent it back to me with the hearing notices!!!!) 
  6. Of course, when you call the LTB, you are calling their customer "service" centre (using the term very loosely) so I was not able to respond to her idiotic message directly. To add to my frustration, I got it when I got home on a Friday; the CS centre was closed and I got to stew about it all weekend. When I did call them on the Monday, it took 3 tries before I was able to get an agent who was actually capable of LISTENING rather than spewing nonsense straight from the website and totally unrelated to what I was saying. He bumped me to a manager, who did in fact, call me back as promised, and who was actually, compared to everyone else I had the misfortune of dealing with, quite helpful. She did agree that it was rather ridiculous to have 3 separate hearings on 3 consecutive weeks, and while she was not able to move us to a date that actually would work for me in terms of students, she would help me to mitigate the damage by moving it to a Tuesday and by writing a note to the adjudicator requesting that our case be heard as early as possible so that I could hopefully be freed up in time to teach at least the last couple of hours of my class. She also was able to sort out the problem of the supposedly missing but not really application so that that issue would also be dealt with. But unfortunately all of this added weeks to the whole thing - every day of which cost us additional money & aggravation.
I've already written about most of the other assorted nonsense ... i.e. the fact that the adjudicator changed the order between telling us about it and writing it up ...  so won't detail all that again ... but it seems to me that the above nonsense contains more than enough evidence to support "stupid & careless" ... in fact, I should also have included "extremely biased against landlords" in my original comments now that I think about it :)