About two weeks ago the realtor called to say they had received our deposit check for a house we plan to rent, sight unseen, in Virginia. Since they are closed on the weekends, I told them Bill would be there first thing on Monday morning, the 16th of June, to take care of any paperwork and get the keys.
The realtor wanted to send me the lease to review but said we could sign it on the 16th. She wanted to fax it, but I don’t happen to have that capacity here at home. Honestly, I think in 10 years of “working from home” having a fax would have been convenient perhaps twice. Each of those times, Bill had the fax go to his office.
He doesn’t have an office here.
I suggested email, but the realtor doesn’t have a scanner, and the software used to generate leases isn’t emailable. The realtor was beginning to adopt a certain tone that really annoyed me. I wanted an email; she wanted to fax. This was clearly, in her opinion, my problem, not hers. I suppose, if I were the sort of person willing to jump through hoops to please someone else, I could have figured out a solution. When I worked for a living, that’s what I did. But since I’m the client, I really didn’t feel it necessary to thumb through the phone book, find the nearest place that accepted faxes, get their number, call her back, round up six kids, drive to the store, and pay money for 30 pages of legal gobblety gook.
Fortunately, we had time on our side, so I told her she would have to mail it.
She seemed confused. Like she had never done that before.
I assured her that it would only take 2 or 3 days to get here, and we had weeks before we were moving. “I suppose so…” she said hesitantly.
She never mailed it.
She called back today. Apparently, this office does things differently than her old office, and the lease would have to be signed in the near future. She started in on wanting to fax it again. {Pet peeve: business people who can’t remember having this exact same conversation with you two weeks prior.} Again, she said she couldn’t email it. Again, this was my problem.
Again, I told her to mail it.
Again, the uncertainty about exactly how that would be done.
The thing is, I know the owners of this house, and I trust that everything works out always. So not only do I not fear that the house might be rented out from underneath me if I don’t get that lease signed ASAP, I know with my deposit money and a signed offer to rent, they can’t rent it out from underneath me, and even if they did, I would simply find another house (with a realtor who knows about stamps and those blue collection boxes you see all over).
We’ll see if she manages to put the lease in the post. Perhaps I’ll toy with her and tell her I didn’t get it? Couldn’t she just email me?
Reit This Way 
Maybe she’s heard of Fed Ex? Uh, UPS?
I vote for toying with her. This is hysterical!
This is the best post I’ve read all day. In the amount of time she waited between that first phone conversation and the last one, she could have mailed it already! I wish I were more like you. I am a people pleaser, and would have hauled all of my kids to the post office to get it faxed…aren’t I horrible?
Oh, and I vote for “toy with her” as well. 😉
I’d love to see you toy with her, but I have a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t be the most Christian thing to do. Which isn’t to say it might not be entirely deserved…Shall I name the ways she could’ve sent it to you?U.S. MailU.S. Mail, certifiedU.S. Mail, signature confirmationU.S. Mail, PriorityU.S. Mail, OvernightFed ExUPSDHLAnd THAT is just off the top of my head.I think a pre-requisite to having any kind of professional job should be a minimum of one year of secretarial work. That would shake the silliness out of most people…On second thought, maybe you SHOULD toy with her…
Gotta love realtors.On a different note…congrats on finding a house already? Will you be near your old stomping grounds???I can’t believe the move is coming so quickly!
Oops, the congrats should’ve been congrats! not “congrats?”sorry…it’s late.
If it wasn’t on the wrong side of town from my dh’s work I might try to steal it out from under you. The house lot and location alone sound great. Just kidding!!It will work out fine, and I wouldn’t have faxed it either. I can’t believe she doesn’t have email, my realtor has been emailing me lists of rentals in that area since January. I’ll be glad to sign a lease so I don’t have my email box full of house listings anymore.Our only moving snaffu so far was when Tim called to check up on our houshold goods move dates the office had never gotten them. We sent them to the wrong fax number 4 weeks ago, luckily our dates are still available.
They’ve been emailing me all sorts of stuff including a link to download the offer to rent. But I guess the lease software itself isn’t email-friendly. That’s <>their<> problem.I just want to clarify that I could never really pretend that I hadn’t gotten the mailed lease. I might <>say<> I’ll toy with her, but I’m just exposing the desires of my fallen nature that I work to suppress more when I have to deal with people like this.
I liken this situation to the one I was in yesterday at Baskin and Robins for my daughter. We were turning around to leave the counter and the cashier called out, “Next!” and eight people swarmed in on us. I am a people pleaser myself, but this time I just exploded, “Can we leave first?!?” I don’t care if I offended anyone. Why? It’s just like when you’re trying to get off a lift and those wanting on won’t allow you to get off first. Courtesty has gone by the wayside! There’s a tee-shirt I want with this on it: Some days it’s not worth chewing through the restraints. Toy with them. 🙂
Software Schmoftware — there’s a dozen free programs that can convert any document to a PDF file (you know, the kind that opens with adobe acrobat). CutePDF, PrimoPDF, anyone in business should know about things like this to facilitate transferring documents. The age of the fax machine is just about caput. (?) Oh, and Michelle, I know if would have been a little effort on your part which shouldn’t be required (as you are the customer) but one of those free fax-to-computer phone numbers might have solved the problem easily for you Realtor. (like efax or jfax or something like that).
As an agent, I’d like to apologize. We use email and internet faxing. I’m sorry.
I’ve had to go hunting down a fax machine several times this year. First I was going to our Family Readiness Center…till they closed that off to everyone but FRG business and deployed spouses (okay that’s justifiable, I understand)…I learned our ACS building has a fax machine and they’ve never asked me what I’m faxing (it’s always medical records)…and so that’s my source for now. My dh doesn’t seem to ever have access either. I heartily sympathize…but if they could just mail it, they’re being stupid for not doing so!
1. A real estate agent without a scanner and capacity to fax – that’s a red flag!2. Toy with her.3. Then, you can sign up for a trial account at efax.com, and then cancel it before the trial is up since you’ll prob never need fax again.
I mean, capacity to EMAIL!