Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Let's talk, let's an original podcast from the Lettings Hub.
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of our podcast. Let's talk, let's. I'm Heidi Shackle, the CEO of the Lettings Hub, the tenant referencing business that got good at Tech. Let's talk. Let's is our regular roundup of news and views on a whole range of subjects spanning the private rental sector. If you have listened all the way to the end of our podcast, you will know that we always ask our guests for a funny story or anecdotal moment from their career. So to celebrate a great season, we've compiled all of the stories from our guests that will hopefully give you a bit of a giggle. Just a little warning for some of those that may have children with you in the car. If you're listening as you're driving along, there are some stories that may not be totally child friendly, so you may want to take a minute to listen later.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: But I don't have any anecdotes about tenants. But I do have a funny letting agent one.
It was during lockdown, and I got this panicked call. I was trying to find a new tenant. It's because somebody was moving out. They couldn't afford the rent anymore. They're in the middle of a fixed term contract. I let them go because I'm a nice person. And the, the letting agent had gone in and was doing all the checks before we let it. And then he said, he said, there's no, there's no smoke, there's no carbon monoxide alarm in the front room. And I said, well, why do you need one in the front room? He said, there's a fireplace there. And I said, it's a fake fireplace.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Oh, it was blocked up. Poor love. You know, it was, it was very stressful because it was during lockdown when. And people having to wear masks. But that did make me laugh. And every time I go there, I look at it, it's this, you know, it's blocked up. It's not. It's not a functional. It's not a functional fireplace.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: Nothing to do with lettings.
Between being a hairdresser and getting into lettings. Back in 1985, I owned a nightclub.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: And I wanted my nightclub to be upmarket and for the over twenty five s. And I set a dress code of no jeans. But very soon discovered, actually, that didn't matter what you set, guys still turned up in jeans. So we bought some trousers from the charity shop, put them in a box, and I met my husband when he turned up in jeans and was happy to change into a pair of trousers from the box.
And he was then the only one that had the nerve to ask me to dance in front of three rather large, burly bouncers who I had on the door that would look out for me.
And we've been together ever since.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: That's a lovely sweater.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: And he still wears jeans.
[00:03:17] Speaker D: Yep. So I'll just go for the most recent one. It's astonishing how many things happen on a. You know. You know what? Sorry, I won't go. The most recent one, I just realized it might not be appropriate for air time.
There was. So the one I was going to tell you was about a probate sale and the daughter of the probate, is it? The daughter who was running. Managing the estate was. Was residing at the property. And whilst on a viewing, she was definitely smoking some wacky baki and definitely. And we're 99% sure that someone's dropped off while we had a viewing there. And then ten minutes into the viewing, oh, I've started telling a story. I'm gonna tell you the whole story. Ten minutes into the viewing, she's maybe 15 minutes in. It was a big house. She's high as a kite, but not in a. Not in an unpleasant way. You know, live and let live and whatever.
And she was. She got her recorder out, as in, played the recorder and started playing the recorder and having basically everyone follow her up the stairs. And it's the most. So I wasn't on this appointment, but my colleague, who was, said it's the most serene experience he's ever had in the state agency because at one point, the people that were viewing were definitely quite laid back and we're pretty sure fell into the same category. Now, just to be clear, we're talking about a property valued more than 2 million pounds. So to give you an understanding of what sort of property we're walking through, she's got the recorder and he's dancing up the stairs, taking people to the first floor. She's not even meant to be at the property when we're doing viewings. And the guys doing the viewing are sort of pretending to do a dance behind her a little bit like the.
Like a bit of a San Batas upstairs. And he said for a split second he thought, someone's winding me up here. This can't be true. This can't be. This can't be real. And it was 100% real. And she thought that was perfectly acceptable. It was very, very strange viewing, but also quite a funny story, the next morning in the meeting, did they buy the house?
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Did they buy the house?
[00:05:30] Speaker D: They were outbid on the house.
It was a very, very popular property in spite of the interesting and eclectic viewings that were taking place.
[00:05:47] Speaker E: Yeah, I'm going to share it from the hospitality industry because that was probably the best one. So I mentioned earlier that I worked in a big five star resort up in far north tropical Queensland in Australia, and I used to run the room service division and we had the main hotel and then villas, all outside of a golf course. And one night I was booked to host a barbecue for a very famous band called AC DC. And apologies for the younger listeners.
And so I had a golf buggy of barbecue stuff and everything was really impressive. And we set up this amazing barbecue around the swimming pool. And they were typical rock stars, having burgers and champagne and jumping into the swimming pool fully clothed and outrageous demands when I'm out in the middle of nowhere wanting an espresso coffee and I had to get it driven up and stuff like that, and everything was going really well. And then the chefs turned up, took away the barbecue and put this whole spread of desserts.
And then all of a sudden I had my back turn, I was siding the table and I just heard this noise and it was the sound of a sprinkler starting up and we were on the edge of the golf course and all of a sudden this sprinkler came over the whole buffet table, which was next to the swimming pool, and drowned all of the vanilla desserts, the ice cream and everything. And you had AC DC screaming as the vanilla ice cream ran into the swimming pool.
Bits of mango and lychees and kiwi, they were going into the filters. It was absolutely horrific. And I just had to stand there and I ran over and I put a cloth over the top of the sprinkler and literally from in 1 minute everything turned into chaos.
Yeah, that was a funny memory. I've got so many more, but that was one I wanted to share. That is just when things go really wrong, you can always save it.
[00:07:54] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:07:55] Speaker G: So this is a fairly recent one and I'm going to try and condense this because this could go on a while if I don't do that. So we. I'll set the scene. My colleague Anneliese and I were at an event in London and we realized earlier this year that a few days before we were supposed to travel to London, we haven't actually got any accommodation books. Shouldn't we probably sort something out and the answer, naturally, was yes. What we did in haste was find an Airbnb in London, and in haste didn't check any reviews, really do any due diligence on what we were about to experience.
And having driven to London, which in itself was part of the fun, the traffic around there, we turned up at this Airbnb full of optimism, thinking, you know what? Looking forward to this day. Let's get a crash under our belt, get ready for tomorrow. We arrived and it was about a 50 story tower block of apartments, which looked really nice. But we walked into the main reception and basically were asked to show to our room and the bloke on reception had no idea what we were going on about. We mentioned that we were there for an Airbnb stay. He looked equally confused, literally like a man who says, we don't do those here, which led us to initial conclusion that this might actually be an illegal sublet and we were partaking in crime.
Eventually, our host actually came and met us and ushered us into the lift with such a speed that confirmed that this surely was an illegal sublet that we were partaking in. The fund didn't stop there. We got into the apartment and he, rather than just saying, enjoy, guys, crash, decided to embark on the most painstaking 20 minutes tour of an apartment I've ever seen.
Highlights included showing us the first master bathroom and showing us how well the shower head had broken from a previous stay. The shower water didn't just go downwards, it went up and around past the shower curtains and flooded the bathroom. And hold on to this information because you'll need it in a second. He informed us that it would cost 200 pounds for this showerhead to be replaced. That was the cost. Further parts of the tour included the lack of a tv in the apartment, no curtains as well on any, you know, on the main living room, which was great because it was really sunny.
So, yeah, we were lucky, really, to come out of this experience with sort of 50% of our retinas still intact.
Further highlights, we were shown into the master sort of bedroom, where some sort of strange collection of. And I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say the sort of pimp jackets existed. There's all very fluffy, furry array of coats, which I assume is possibly a sideline.
And then the stuff that I feel like I can talk about. He then showed us into the living room and told us that we needed to use the fob on the key to get out. But the fob would not work. But if we lost the fob it would cost us, to our shock, 200 pounds to replace.
[00:10:51] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:10:52] Speaker G: Which very conveniently, was also the cost of the showerhead that needed replacing as well. He even showed me outside where free parking existed from 37 storeys, having already been in full knowledge that my car was already parked and I'd paid 20 pounds for the privilege as well.
By the time he left, we decided that we needed to go to our own individual rooms and have a sleep just to recover from what was, at that point, a pretty harrowing stay.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Oh, wow. But you did stay.
You didn't, at that point decide to exit fast.
[00:11:24] Speaker G: Yeah, we decided to stay. We even went and had a meal in an italian restaurant, which we were reassured was owned by an italian man, by this very same bloke, and was also the most aggressive italian meal I've ever had, where he decided that grating Parmesan cheese from 6ft in the air onto my plate was somehow acceptable as well from there. But, yes, the good news for anyone else who wants this for an Airbnb stay is it can't possibly be any worse than that. So we've hit the floor of standards.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Kind of the true story, really, of life on the road, isn't it?
[00:11:59] Speaker H: Yeah.
[00:12:00] Speaker G: Yeah.
And if anything, we remember it, so, you know, there's always that it wasn't, you know, it wasn't so dull that we can't recall it. It lives long in the memory and indeed nightmares as well.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. It makes good relationships.
[00:12:16] Speaker H: Oh, gosh, this is probably the most embarrassing and it might make people cringe. So I apologize.
Years ago, I worked on a new build site.
And the new build site, they provided me with a little mobile home.
But the little mobile home didn't have a working toilet. I had to go across to a Toyota garage across the way and I would poodle over to the Toyota garage, have a little wee and then come back. But I drank quite a lot of tea this particular day. I was just embarrassed about how many times I needed to go for a wee. So I realized that all the sight staff had gone and there was a little sight toilet and I just thought, I just need a wee. So I locked the office and I went to go and sit on this horrible site toilet. And as I did so, I heard a chink and it was the site office key that had dropped into the toilet.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:13:10] Speaker H: And in the site office was my handbag and my phone, so I couldn't call anybody and I needed that key. So I put my hand in and I thought, okay, nobody needs to know about this. Until I looked at my hand and it was bright blue from the chemical. So I had to go into the Toyota garage with a bright blue arm and hope that nobody actually noticed as I scurried into the toilet. That's my most embarrassing, funny story.
[00:13:47] Speaker F: This is kind of scary, but funny, I think, you know, it depends how you look at this. Right? But. So the other day, I'm speaking to a lady who owns an estate agency, and whilst I'm talking to her on the phone on Zoom, I went and I put her email domain into the dark web, because we have a tool that we can extract any company's passwords or compromise passwords within seconds from the dark web legally. Right.
So, anyway, so at one point, I said to her, jane. I said, jane, how's Lola doing? She looks at me really puzzled. She says, francis, thanks for asking, but my dog died three years ago. I said, I'm so sorry to hear.
And then the penny drops. How did you know that? I said, because you're using it in all your passwords.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
I'm not going to make any comment here.
[00:14:44] Speaker F: She had Lola, lola dog, lola dog, lola dog. I'm like. Anyway, I said, please.
Now you can see if I can see it. Anybody on the planet can see it. You missed. Not only so she used the same password, but she used that animal who's now died three years ago. So that's quite funny. But it's serious, if you know my point.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it also shows how long we keep their passwords for, because I'm sure she probably used the password originally when the dog was alive. And it just kind of carries on. So it's out there for such a long, extended period of time.
[00:15:19] Speaker I: I think the funniest one is that we've all spent five years talking about the renters reform bill and then it disappeared. That's probably the funniest thing that's happened to me. But I think, do you know what can be quite amusing and sometimes a little bit cringe and uncomfortable is when you're preparing some of this with quite controversial evidence sometimes, and some of the pictures, you have to exhibit videos. We've watched prostitutes coming in and out of properties, and you've had to sit and watch lots of it. And it's a real eye opener. And then you have to present it to a judge. And sometimes they're older, often they're male. And actually, it can be quite uncomfortable sort of sitting there and going through this quite explicit evidence with them. I think it makes your job a little bit more juicy. Than doing a renter ears claim, put it that way.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure it does. And for all of our listeners, to ensure you never miss an episode of let's Talk, let's please follow us on Spotify or wherever you listen to your pods. And please leave us a review. Thank you all so much for listening.
[00:16:17] Speaker G: Let's talk.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Let's an original podcast from the Lettings hub.
