During my last post about Manchester, I mentioned about how I needed to stay in a temporary hostel for a week as accommodation is not provided by the university right?
Well... This is the story of my unfortunate 3 months accommodation in Manchester...
The first week in Manchester was stressful and hectic for me.
Not stress in studies..
Not stress in assignments...
Definitely not stress in boys...
But stress in finding accommodation...
I never knew how tough it was to find an accommodation for 3 months until I experienced it myself. For foreign students like me, i think it is absurd that the university did not provide any accommodation for us as we were new to a foreign land. It is my first time in Manchester and also my very first time in a Europe country. But, on a bright side, it was a challenge that made us grow into a more independent person.( Trying hard to think positive..)
Since my friends and I only had one week in finding a suitable accommodation, there were a few conditions that we were looking for, such as :
- Location : Preferable around the area of Fallowfield and Rushholme ( most university students lived here as it is near MMU and University of Manchester)
- Price : Maximum budget is around 90 Pounds per week , including internet, water and electricity bills.
It was hard for all of us to stick together and find an empty house for us to stay. Most of the house owner prefer the students to stay at a minimum period of 6 months . Thus, we decided to break into small groups and accommodate in different places. 3 more days and we will be checking out of the temporary hostel. I started to become more anxious and worried. My family knew how bad was the situation and they started to contact me everyday to check on me. My mum even contacted one of my cousins in London to help me out with the accommodation. It was hectic during that time.
When the "deadline" was just around the corner, I decided to use my very last solution, that is the service of Airbnb. I have been using Airbnb for years and I love the efficiency of the service provided by them. It is easy and convenient in booking any type of accommodation to any part of the world. My new friends from Hong Kong knew about my situation and they started helping me in finding a suitable private room for me and my roommate through platform of Airbnb.
I was lucky enough that day when they found a private room for me in a house which is outside of the Manchester city. Since I have decided to buy the 3 months bus pass (check out my last post!), I quickly message the person in charge of that particular house about any inquiries I had. I asked them in details about the usage of washing machine and gave them any details about me and my roommate. After a long consideration about it, we decided to book that private room as our home for 3 months.
We went to check out that house the next day as we had a lot of free time and we were curious about the location of the house (Airbnb did not provide an exact location of your booking until you completed the reservation.) My roommate decided to walk to the house as she did not want to spend so much money on the bus pass. I did not want to leave her alone so I went along with her. After a long walk of 1 hour and 15 mins, we arrived outside of the house. It was an unexpected view as we saw a old junk car in the parking lot of the house. There is a small garden in front of the house which they did not take good care about it as there were tons of wild grasses. The first thing came to my mind was :
Alyssa, try to think positive about it... It's just the outside, maybe inside would not be as bad as this...And plus a small shopping mall is just 5 mins walk from here... It will be fine...
View outside the house
The day of moving into our new "home" has arrived and we were excited about it. When we reached, Mr. J (the house owner shown in the reservation of Airbnb) welcomed us by helping out with our luggage. Once we entered the house, Mr. J's mum (let's call her Ms. B) asked us to wait in the living room while she cleaned up our room. The house was a 2 storey house where there are 2 bedrooms in the lower ground along with a living room and small kitchen. The upper ground include 2 more rooms and a bathroom-toilet. We started chatting with Mr. J and he guided us about the Wifi password of the house and so on. After that, his mum came in and told us that only one of us can go upstairs and unpack our things because our luggage might be too heavy for her floor.
Our room was in between of the bathroom-toilet and Ms.B's bedroom. She told us that since both of us are girls, it will be safer for us to stay upstairs. There were two beds in our room and one study table and chair. There were also one light bulb in our room and a small wooden closet for us. Some of the personal belongings of Ms.B occupied some spaces in the room as well due to the lack of space in their house. When my roommate and I asked her about the lock of our room door, she told us that the lock was spoiled months ago and we were not allowed to lock our room door in case of any emergencies. She also ensured us that no one will dare to come inside our room and asked us not to worry about it. We trusted her and just moved on with our life. ( Which was a mistake because two of my delicious packet of biscuits were gone..Like stolen kind of gone...)
Day after day...Month after month... We were tired of all of her overbearing attitude. There were so many rules for us until we did not know how to debate with her about them. Below are SOME of the rules set for us :
- Do not take shower after 11 p.m. as it will disturb her sleep. (doesn't make sense as she slept all day long.)
- Do not take long shower as there will be water wasted.
- Please clean up your hair after shower.
- Do not put your shoes in the show rack at the entrance of the house because it's only for family use.
- Do not go into the living room because it's where her husband sleeps and it is not included in our fees.
- Do not communicate or social with other housemates in the house as it will create a lot of noise.
- If possible, do not drink a lot of water because you will go to the toilet frequently and it is not good.
- Do not wash your own clothing by hand because people in Europe countries do not do that.
- Washing machine can only be used once a week and it cannot be used on Sunday because Christians do not work on Sunday.
- Do not dry your clothes in the room, only dry them on the heater of the house or you may go out to the nearby laundry shop and use the drier.(Btw she has a drier but apparently it is "spolied")
- Simple breakfast is provided with only 2 pieces of bread per day. (which is obviously not enough for us)
- If you want to use the stove in the kitchen, please do inform her as she scared that her kitchen will get burned by us.
- Kitchen can only be used after 12 p.m. for lunch and after 7p.m. for dinner.
I can just go on and on and on with all the rules she made in the house. I ended up staying less days in my own house and often stayed over in my other friend's house every week. I will usually bring my dirty laundry and wash at their place as there was limited washing in my own home.
Sometimes, I just do not understand why there are such people living in this world, like why do they even exist? There was one time I heard that they had another reservation on Airbnb for a couple. One of the rooms at lower ground were occupied by a Caucasian man at the same time but that particular room can be occupied for a maximum of two people. In order to make more space, Ms. B moved the man upstairs into her son's room and her son ended up sleeping in the living room with his father. I was surprised of the arrangement that she made and this was all just for the income. I do not think that she had any finance issue as I talked to her before and she told me that she owned a kindergarten . She also said that due to some circumstances, she ended up at home all day looking after Airbnb tenants. I did not questioned much but I think we all can guess what happen to her job based on her character.
My roommate and I will sometimes go traveling to other places and not come home after a few days. Ms.B knew about it as we always informed her about our whereabouts. So one day, when I came home, I found out that the door of my room locked and immediately called Ms.B about it. She said that since we were not around, she locked our door for the safety of our belongings. There was only one thought ran through my mind which was MY DOOR CAN BE LOCK!!!! She told us that the door of my room was spoiled and cannot be locked anymore when we moved into the room. There were also some moments where I saw my room door opened or the light was not turned off as Ms.B will walked into our room for "inspection" when we were not around. Now the question is, how did I know about it?
Well, she was not smart enough to off the light or close the door and plus she will asked about the items that were on our table as well as in our cupboard... ( #zeroprivacy)
If you think that this is bad, well think again!!!
When we made reservation on Airbnb, we noticed that the cleaning fees were included in the reservation which means that there will be cleaning occur maybe once in a week or maximum once every month. But, honey , let me tell you this... That never happen. Just imagine your bed sheets and room floor are not cleaned for a few months...
Gosh! It is not sanitary at all...
I tried to change into my own bed sheets that I brought from Malaysia and do you know what she said???
Nooo...You cannot do that... What if your bed sheets has lice or bed bugs in it? You will pollute the cleanliness of my mattress...
I literally showed her my "are you joking ???" face. She promised to change our sheets after that day which never happen at all until the day we checked out. One day, when I was alone at home, she suddenly called me into the bathroom. She pointed at the floor and claimed that it was me that made the floor in a mess with black stains everywhere. I explained to her that it wasn't me and it was someone else who did them ( I was not the only tenant at home and plus I heard someone went into the bathroom after me ). She kept on putting the blame on me and insisted to clean them for her. I tried to ignore her and went back to my room but her body was blocking the way (Yeap... The size of her body was like Big Momma in the movie) I had no choice and so I cleaned up the mess for her. I was pissed off at that moment as I knew that there were cleaning fees included in the reservation but she was taking them for granted. My roommate had the same exact situation when I was away from home but she got lucky due to her fast reaction of running away from her.
It was a week before checking out from Airbnb and I never been so happy of moving out in my life. I left the house earlier than the checkout date as my year end trip was scheduled 4 days before the exact date. My roommate continued to stay in that house as she did not plan her trip earlier like mine. I still remember that time when I was in London, I suddenly got a message from my roommate stating that Ms.B is demanding washing machine fees from us. I was furious and told her that we are not giving her a single penny as I asked her before whether we can use the washing machine for free. She used my roommate's phone to call me and kept on pushing the fees towards us. I kept on explaining to her that it is absurd that she demanded the fees as we did not get to use the washing machine often and the liquid detergent was in our own expenses. We debated on this issue for 30 mins and told her that I recorded our whole conversation on phone as a proof of extortion. She hung up on me and at that moment,there were only one thing went through my mind... My roommate's safety..
I was afraid that she will do anything to her and so, I quickly called my other friends in Manchester for help. After that, my roommate texted me and said that Ms. B forced her downstairs to take a video of her agreeing to pay the washing machine fees. She cried and told me that she was frightened which made me felt so bad as I left her alone in that house, facing this problem herself. I quickly told my friends and they asked some of their adult friends in Manchester to help them as well. They all suggested that she moved out at that moment and they agree to fetch her from the house. I felt so grateful to them but of course things did not went well. Ms. B knew that she wanted to leave so she locked the main door with her "special" keys and asked her to stay put. My friends were worried of my roommate's safety and decided to call the police for help. Luckily, Ms.B opened door when the police arrived and they escort my poor roommate out and asked her the details of the whole situation. This whole situation had shocked my roommate and the worst thing was, Ms.B did not think that she was wrong.. (facepalm)
The bathroom toilet situation
Piles of clothes outside my room and in the kitchen as well. The middle picture shows the heater where we usually dried our clothes.
Rashes on my arms and legs after months of not changing the bed sheets
One of my philosophies in life is that no matter how much you do something wrong, I will always give you a second chance because I truly believed that no one is perfect and everyone deserved a second chance. But, in this situation, I knew I had to do something about it. I need to take action towards our miserable 3 months of staying in that house.
Thanks to her, I now understand that there are people like her in this world and they should be warned. Hence, thanks to the initiative action from my brother , he started to contact Airbnb for me. After I came back from my trip, I kept on writing complaints and sending emails to Airbnb customer service about my whole experience and the demand that she was sending to me via email. I also speak out as a representative from me and my roommate for our right as tenants and told them that we will not pay a single penny to her. After a long reviewing of the case from Airbnb, they apologized for the situation and told us that we will not give any payment for the washing machine fees. They will also take a proper action towards them and assured that this was not the spirit of their community. I was grateful and thankful of Airbnb as it showed responsibility in them. Regardless of this unfortunate situation, I will continue supporting their service in long term.
My conclusion for this story?
Ms.B... You just messed with the wrong girl..