Why I hate Wigan and Leigh Housing

I arrived home last night around 7:00pm, after a rather hellish day on the trains. Yes, more thieves ran off with signalling cable outside of Atherton. Damn the price of scrap copper! Damn people who don't commute! As a result of this 'vandalism' we were re-routed to Wigan via Bolton, the day I'd left my phone at home.

Good all around then.

Finally arrived home to find Stairsailor singing about Daddy's eyes etc, etc. Our new downstairs neighbors like to listen to music at top volume it seems.

This is only about the third time it's happened, but due to our previous issues with our neighbors (For the click phobic read: alleged prostitution, alleged drug dealing, verified fighting in the streets, loud music, police calls as recently as a few weeks ago!) we're less than tolerant.

A bit of background, it took us from August of 2001 to February of 2007 to get anything done about our next door neighbor. It took a letter to the Chief Executive and quoting DEFRA guidelines to get him a good behavior agreement. Know how many complaints we've had against us? 2. One because I left a note on the former downstairs neighbor's car asking her to park a little more considerately. (Harassment apparently.) And another shortly after the most recent complaint in January of 2007 against Michael Gaskell (the black out drunk that liked to listen to very loud music) about my husband and I arguing.

So, Mr. Me wandered downstairs to see if he could get them to turn it down a bit. We don't need to hear the lyrics to their music, you know? What ensued was a horrendous argument in between the four of us. The girl threatened me (my response 'You're actually threatening me because we asked you to turn down your stereo?' her after some umming and ahhing 'yes.' What do you say to that, really?) We got things sorted out eventually and filled them in on the neighborhood gossip. They seemed pretty surprised. Mr. Me saw them this morning and apparently it was all smiles.

Come to find out that Terry O'Mara our estate manager told them we were serial complainers and not to take anything from us. How amazingly professional is that? Remember though, to get anything done about our abusive alcoholic loud music listening neighbor, we had to go over his head. He refused to do anything constructive besides have little chats with him. And have we mentioned anything to him since that was resolved besides me admitting to causing a disturbance upon finding out our picnic table was stolen? No. We did contact him about our concerns regarding our convicted neighbor rapist and he spoke to my husband, but not me.

Deeply unprofessional.

I did complain about his behavior to Wigan and Leigh Housing via e-mail yesterday. I'm seriously stunned that anyone would behave so inappropriately. But in my dealings with them, I'm not terribly surprised. With the exception of serious violations, they've been deeply incompetent from the beginning. Including losing our paperwork from 2001-2003 (I think.) They're always in the news for screwing up as well.

I'm aware of the irony of complaining about being called serial complainers but I'm furious. Michael Gaskell made our lives hell for 5.5 years and they offered no support or solutions, even though they were obliged to. We'll see what, if anything, they do about it. I'm betting on nothing.