Woman discovers apartment trashed on Facebook
So here's the story as told by Carolyn Lorimer.
She buys herself a little apartment, or "flat" as they call it in Folkestone, England. Eight months ago, she decides to rent it out to nice people.
She hires a rental agency whose agents tell her they have succeeded in finding a sweet, respectable couple who would like to enjoy her apartment.
Things appear to be going swimmingly, until, one day, Ms. Lorimer is wandering around Facebook, as one does, and sees a picture of a party, with folks dancing on the tables and generally looking a little on the trashed side.
Lordy, she says to herself, what a motley crew. Shortly before: Lordy, Lordy, they're enjoying my apartment.
"I recognized it as my flat straight away and I couldn't believe what I was seeing," she told the Telegraph. "People jumping on the furniture, dancing on the kitchen table, holes in the walls and smashed TVs. It looked like a slum."
A good idea is to hang this sign over all tables before you rent your apartment.
(Credit: CC Golampo/Flickr)She described the tenants as "massive chavs." This is an instructive phrase for many around the world to learn, should they ever venture to England. A chav is someone of ill-culture who talks loudly, vomits often, and dedicates much of his or her credit card limit to Fendi, Gucci, or other haute-culture designers.
Ms. Lorimer says her first move was to issue an eviction order, but the tenants fled, leaving her with unpaid bills, a chandelier yanked from the ceiling, door panels kicked in, and other signs of chavvy damage.
The local police seem to think the apartment had become notorious for noxious behavior. Which, while one has every sympathy with Ms. Lorimer, makes one wonder why her first knowledge of the chavviness of her tenants came from Facebook.
Might she not have periodically chatted with her neighbors (she actually bought the apartment in 2004)? She is, peculiarly enough, a former realtor, so perhaps she might have gained a little wisdom, property-wise.
Still, let this sad tale of the chavs and chav-nots be a warning to everyone out there who is renting out their abode and living with their parents, their lovers, their fourth spouses or three friends in a tent. Please get lots of insurance.
And follow those bloody tenants on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social contraption they might populate.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
It is fairly easy to disable that feature though.
aw, so harsh.....
Chris
Me think's Chris himself should visit England first.
Looked it up on Wikipedia who have it pretty spot on.
Still don't get how the hell they can drink White Lightning in the morning(if at all)
- by adam_m_frederick April 16, 2009 8:08 AM PDT
- Actually, as a renter, I'm sort of taken back by this story. I am a great tenant (rent on time, make little improvements with landlord's permission, always curtious and kind to neighbors, etc etc), but i also have been known to have a party or two once in a blue moon. One of them even got out of hand and someone fell into a bookshelf, knocking it over destroying not only my television, computer, a lamp, and put a hole in the wall. I was upset for a short while but realized there was nothing i could do about it at the time and went on with the party.
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(11 Comments)if a picture had been taken then, it would have seemed like the place was a dump, when in reality, its just a party, people are messy and someone had an accident. It was cleaned up, everyting replaced and fixed within a few days and my landlord was never any wiser. Nor do i think they needed to be.
Obviously these people were much different than me, but i dissagree with the landlord's initial assessment to evict them just because of a few photos.