I got a text message yesterday afternoon from our renter in Thorntown informing me that the blower motor on the furnace that serves the main floor of our big old Victorian house is failing.
I got on the phone to the home warranty firm we contract with for such emergencies and called the heating and cooling company in Lafayette that worked on the AC last summer. A technician named Todd called me a few minutes later and we worked out that he would go to Thorntown at 8:30 a.m., diagnose the problem and then call the home warranty hotline to clear the repairs with them.
I texted the tenant and considered the matter handled. For the moment, anyway.
Then I got a call at 6:45 a.m. today from a woman who apparently dispatches the technicians and who was unaware of the arrangement I had with Todd.
Todd, she said, was going out on another call and she would send someone else. And it is not their policy to deal with insurance companies, so I would have to pay up front and recover what I can from the home warranty folks later.
Not what our cash flow needs at the moment, but there it is.
It’s now 12:15 p.m. Indiana time and I have heard nothing from the tenant or the technician.
This gets a little more worrisome when you consider it’s crazy cold up there and there is a high probability that the pipes serving the kitchen could freeze and rupture. And the tenant’s daughter has a very young baby in the house. The good news is that the furnace that serves the second floor is apparently working fine, so they have someplace they can be warm.
Yes, I hate being a landlord with residential property. Our commercial property is so much easier to deal with.
No comments:
Post a Comment