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Friday, May 30, 2008

At last! We have a moving date!

. . .And it's in three weeks. I'm not freaking out about it, I promise. *breathes into a paper bag*

The Army will pack us and move our stuff, so I don't have to worry about that at least. What's more worrisome is what they'll charge us when we move out. You want to see price gouging? Come look at the list of what they charge for different things here on base. I know out in the civilian world it happens when you move out of apartments sometimes, but you'd think with this being the Army, they would realize the people living in these houses aren't exactly rolling in money.

Our house is completely tile, even the bedrooms. It's not even good tile though, it's this nasty cheap stuff, that no matter what I do to it, still looks cheap and nasty. We have a few around the house that are broken, and I looked at the list to see how much that is. $2-$6 a sq. ft. I went to Home Depot to price it there, and to find out what on earth it is anyways. It's a vinyl tile, one that you can literally just bend, and it crumbles. The price? A whopping 60 cents a sq. ft. And the Army wants to charge us up to ten times that amount.

Oh yeah, and carpet. Some people on base are "lucky" enough to have carpet. I've been in someone's house with it, and it's cheap nasty stuff, like the tile. But if you live there long enough to wear it down, or it gets stained to where it needs replacing, they charge up to $1200 for that. The kicker? They replace the carpet after every resident anyways.

Another gem on the list is the trash cans. If they are not clean when you move out, or you accidentally leave some trash in them or anything like that? It's a flat $75 charge. I mean, yeah, it can be nasty to spray out a trash can, but I don't think it's $75 worth of nasty.

There's also the blinds. The list says they charge between $35 and $120 a set. Last time we moved out of a house here, they were $75. They say they are so expensive because they are custom made for the Army or something. Custom made meaning metal blinds that I think are dangerous to have in housing where you know people have children. Those things are sharp.

There's many other things on the list I haven't even touched, like the $8 a sq. ft. if you have bare patches in your lawn, but if I listed all the ridiculousness, we'd be here all day.

3 comments:

Lorie said...

Whee! The fun of moving starts! At least you're not moving next week, right? There's always a positive somewhere, and at least now, you'll be settled come July 4th! I'm glad I got to visit you guys before you moved.

Meghann said...

I wish we were going to be settled by the 4h, but due to the lovely Army, hubby doesn't sign in at the new base until July 10, and we aren't allowed to close on a house, or even make an offer until then. We are going to be literally homeless for at least three weeks. Living in hotels should be fun. Really.

Angi said...

Best wishes, I know that you must be stressed!