Thursday, March 12, 2015

My “Love” Letter to Swiss Housing Agencies



When I think back on my bad memories in Switzerland, I can associate majority of them with three places: EPFL, government offices, and housing agencies.

EPFL is normal since I did my PhD there. PhD is a bitter-sweet journey for everyone. No matter how resourceful the journey is, it is painful at the same time. Therefore, I do not mind my bad or stressful experiences at EPFL. These were among the bad experiences that enriched my life.

So let’s move on to the government offices. These institutions are a pain in the ass wherever you go. So there is no escape from them. You just need to find ways to relax yourself after dealing with the people at a government office. To wash away the memory of the annoying interactions you had to go through in these offices, either swearing by yourself in your native language or listening to your favorite punk band after you leave the office works.

This leaves us with the Swiss housing agencies. The “wonderful” “lovely” agencies…

I was living in a college dorm before I started my PhD so Switzerland was the first place that I had to deal with a housing agency. Even though I had been told that it would be hard to find an apartment in Switzerland, I didn’t expect things to be this hard. Every time I went to an agency, it felt like talking to a wall. Of course, this was partly because of the language issue. My French was terrible in those days (and it still is). I also remember many agency visits where I asked my questions in English and got my answers in French. However, even if there were some people at the agency who didn’t resist talking to English, it still felt like talking to a wall when talking to them.

After struggling some time being rejected from all the places we applied for. Six months into my PhD, I finally moved to a studio apartment, which I didn’t dare to leave till the end of my PhD. I was lucky with this one because the building was a newly built one, it was specifically built for EPFL students based on an agreement between EPFL and Foncia agency, and  not many people knew about it at the time unlike my friend Cansu (who urged us (my other friend Duygu and I) to apply for it).

The feeling of talking to walls never disappeared though whenever I had to contact a person from Foncia even though I was now their customer.

The latest set of encounters I have been going through with Foncia is related to my deposit. I ended my contract with them on November, 2014. It has been almost 3.5 months now. And I still haven’t received my payment. The first time I contacted them regarding this issue was the beginning of February, 2015. Since I moved to the Bay Area in early January, I was sending emails to them in my evenings and calling them the first thing when I wake up at 6am in my mornings if my emails weren’t answered. The contact guy for my ex-building was a different one now and he seemed more responsive than the previous one.

As a side note, the previous one drove me crazy while I was moving out. He didn’t answer any of my emails and he barely answered my phone calls. All I wanted was a letter that says I was going to move out at the end of November so that I could schedule a time with my concierge to leave my keys. In the end, I physically went to the agency to ensure he handles my request. That was useless as well. He told me the letter should be in my mailbox in a week, but it wasn’t. In the end, I kindly asked my lab’s secretary to contact him and only then I got my letter. (Bless you Erika, and all the secretaries at EPFL that helped me. If I ever wrote an actual love letter to someone in Switzerland, it would be to the secretaries I interacted with at EPFL. They are the best.)

Anyways, this new guy, he actually answered emails and phones. So I was a little hopeful and decided to be polite with him while handling my deposit situation. I have never been a person that believed aggressiveness can solve my problems. (I blame my dad in this attitude; constantly making me listen to his favorite hippie singers/bands when I was a kid and basically brainwashing me to be a peaceful human being).

However, a couple of weeks later I started feeling like I had no progress in my issue with this guy. He kept telling me I should be receiving my deposit at the end of the week and he wrote this at the beginning of every week. Then he told me that they don’t have my account number (which I gave them while I was giving away my keys to the concierge, I have two people that witnessed me searching for my account number for 5-10mins in my wallet and then writing it down for another 5mins). I said anyways I gave him my account number over email and kept my polite attitude still. He again said I should be receiving things by the end of the week. The other week, when I re-emailed him saying I still haven’t received my money, he said that there are some documents that I should sign. I signed them, scanned them back to him in a still-polite email.

After this last email, he answered me writing they finally approved the release of the deposit and I shouldn’t contact him anymore and instead contact the cooperative of my building instead. When I asked him for their contact information, he told me that he doesn’t have such information and I should look at the contract that I made with “them”. 

(Here is where I leave my dad’s peaceful rock music and switch to my mom’s more angry music that is very specific to her so I won’t give it a genre name.)

Them, THEM. THEM = Foncia, you work at Foncia. How the hell you don’t have their number? You think I am an idiot. I am really bored of being treated like shit or an idiot every time I had to deal with a Swiss housing agency. I don’t know whether this is because of my student status when I was there or my nationality. But I don’t care. I don’t deserve this. Neither any of my friends who were/are at EPFL.

To give a comparison, it took me one day to find an apartment in USA. Whenever I have a question, request, or maintenance issue, it is handled at most in two days (as opposed to waiting weeks or a month in Switzerland or making your secretary call them again to fasten the process). Whenever I meet one of the maintenance guys in my complex or visit my leasing office, everyone greets each other. They always ask me if everything is OK with the apartment. They treat me like a human being.

I know writing this won’t have any effect other than switching me back to my peaceful mode. There is a housing issue in Switzerland. Supply just doesn’t properly meet the demand. And the housing agencies will keep exploiting the lower class European citizens like me. What happens if I badmouth Foncia’s name? Nothing. A student or a non-student non-EU citizen newly moved to Switzerland, has to say YES to the first suitable apartment that she/he got accepted into by the agencies. Because the alternative is either being on the street or paying really high prices to extended-stay-like options.

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