Dear professional…
posted in Frustration, The Move |I realize that you have been working in your business field for many years. I know that, when one has been doing the same work for a long time, the details of that work are ingrained in the brain, to the point where one begins to speak a kind of shorthand or jargon and knows the procedures by heart.
But please do remember that some of us are not in your profession. We have professions of our own, and have learned the shorthand and jargon of our own profession. Our procedures are totally different than yours. We do not possess amazing telepathic powers that enable us to grok your procedures and know, intuitively, that you need specific documents at specific times. We sort of trust you to let us know.
Therefore, for instance, some of us do not realize that when you say, “Please have so-and-so email me an estimate of the down payment and closing costs”, you mean the very same Good Faith Estimate that has been sitting in the Shoebox’s living room for two weeks now. Some of us think that people in other professions have arcane knowledge and procedures of their very own, and that the Good Faith Estimate gracing our files is not what you are looking for, but that you are looking for something like an “Official Relocation Down Payment Estimate” or some other impressively titled form. We would have been more than happy to fax that very same document to you two weeks ago if we had known that was what you wanted.
(We won’t get into the question of why, when you’ve got so-and-so’s email address, you can’t just–amazing concept–email him yourself, requesting that information. Or, if that’s illegal, unethical, immoral, or Just Not Done, explaining that in a nice paragraph that says, “I would email him myself, but we are not allowed to by Subsection C Paragraph 3 Subparagraph a of state regulations/federal regulations/relocation company association’s code of ethics.” Of course, so-and-so is doing the exact same thing from his end.)
(We also won’t get into the question of why it takes six weeks for two completed house appraisals to wend their way through the bowels of your company to the point that someone finally produces an official offer which required maybe one minute of calculation, on letterhead and in contract form. I was able to ascertain that the two appraisals were within 5% of each other just by looking at the numbers, and was also able to get the average of the two appraisals within seconds, so it’s not like it was Real Hard Work. If it had taken less time, perhaps we wouldn’t now be needing to deal with the insurance company to get estimates and repairs for the water damage from the Great Huge Storm, but you would.)
Sincerely, A customer who is just snarking in general
The Good News: Our stuff is out of the moving van and in the house. We will be able to visit our stuff now and then, and maybe sit on the floor for a while and look around and realize that there’s SPACE that will soon be ours. YAYAYAYAY!!!!
We can’t, however, “move in”, because we have to wait until the day after closing for the sale to be recorded. Apparently, unlike other states we’ve been in where closing day is the day you take official possession, here in the Final Frontier you can’t take official possession until it’s recorded. I am going to ask our realtor here if, since our insurance takes effect on the 10th and potential insurance claims was the argument against early occupancy, maybe we could sneak in on the 10th, rather than the 11th.
Anyway, I think (think) everything is a Go for closing on the 10th. Cross your fingers.
