Have you ever come home from holiday and opened you front door on disaster?

[longearedbat]

Or something unexpected? The only time it happened to me was when my electrics went off while I was away. I was hot and tired, it was early evening and I knew there was a cold tin of lager waiting for me in the fridge. Couldn't wait. However, I opened the front door to the most horrendous smell. I would say the freezer had been off for the nearly 2 weeks I had been away. I spent the rest of the evening disposing of rotten food and the pool of mouldering blood and gunk in the bottom of the freezer.
I always think of that (now very old) episode of 'One foot in the grave', where they come back to find their house had burnt down. I always breathe a sigh of relief when I see ours is still in one piece, and can't relax until we've had a good check round. (That might be just me though being a bit of a worrier).

@horehound I can't believe people claim on their insurance for defrosted food

My minimum estimate of what we lost was £500. Anything else of that value, you would claim for, so why not food? As I said though, in our case, it wasn't covered because of the age of the freezer.

Yes. 30 Nov 2017. Tried to open the front door. Was stuck. Couldn't understand why. Eventually managed by shoulder charging door. Stepped into hallway. Feel were met with water. Could also hear running water. Tried to put hallway light on. Eventually realised I was standing in water and No electrics = something Fucked up.
I had a small torch in my pocket. I shined it into the hallway to see things floating around. My Dad (who had picked me up from the airport to bring me home) barged past while I wailed "my home. My home"
He had to kick every door in the house in. Turned out we had lost everything. The boiler had burst in the loft while we had been away (never put a boiler in the loft!)
Horrendous experience. Only just getting over it now. House was pretty much rebuilt from scratch. It took a long time. We have been back in our home for a year. Had an awful month in a hotel followed by 7 months in rented accommodation which should have been fairly stress free. But it wasn't. The landlord was a twat. Even though he knew our situation. Oh and the insurance company eventually paid out but were pretending not to know about circumstances that they did actually know about. Currently seeking advice from insurance Ombudsman as so many things went wrong and are still unresolved.

Boiler is now located downstairs. But I still have the fear. And my little girl worried about it happening again for a long time.

Then earlier this year, next door exploded due to a fire in the loft. Cue smoke and fire at 6.30 in the morning. Much confusion, and all of the anxiety coming back.
We are now paranoid about fire and keep adding new smoke alarms and testing our evacuation process.

Not sure I'll ever be the same again.

I can't believe people claim on their insurance for defrosted food

My freezer is 5 long, 3ft deep and usually full. I have a dog food delivery every 3 months. Why on earth wouuldn't I claim?

Turned out my flatmate had moved the two of them in while I was away.

This happened to me.I went home for a week one Christmas and one of my housemates let one of her friends have my room.

I came back to find the lock on the door to my room had been broken, dirty plates and half-eaten takeaways in foil trays left on the floor, vomit on the duvet and a couple of pairs of poo-stained knickers under the duvet.

Apparently, they'd hoped to have it all tidied up by the time I got back so I wouldn't notice but, well, time makes fools of us all. Soz.

In a different house share, I came back after a weekend away to a distinctly soggy hallway carpet. The immersion heater had spung a leak which my housemates treated as "One of those things" and left it to me to sort out.

I worked overseas on a big project and every time I went away something went wrong:

• Leak in my bedroom, mouldy clothes, money and leather things!
• Dogs got sick
• Team members resigned
• Child I supported at school ran away
• Project car broke down

I stopped wanting to go away!

i'll never forget when i was a child coming home from 2
weeks away to a house that had been over taken by fleas 😱😱😱 the little buggers jumping all over everyone's legs. mum went absolutely bananas!

I have just remembered one from when I had a student house. We had a younger housemate who decided to go up the loft with her friends. Stepped back, fell through my ceiling.

We went away one Christmas and came back to an entirely flooded downstairs. On the downside it was horrific chaos for 9 months till it was all sorted. On the upside our entire downstairs was redecorated and the sofas are still amazing.

Remember coming home from a family holiday when’s i was about 9, to find our house had been burgled, they had sliced open sofa cushions and mattresses, pulled out all clothes from wardrobes and drawers, emptied cereal packets etc all over kitchen sides was a horrible scene........police caught who did it apparently one of our neighbours was dealing drugs and the gang to ransacked our house had mistaken it for his and where trying to find his “stock” to steal and sell will never forget the state of our house took me years to feel safe there again 😔

This thread has reminded me of something horrible that I'd actually blanked out and not thought about for years...

[Warning: remainder of this post is very distressing]

I used to work with someone who house shared with a hospital doctor. He went on holiday with a group of friends. The doctor was supposed to come but made some excuses. His close friends were all on the holiday.

When he got back he found that his house mate had committed suicide in the house they shared - he was the one to find him. He'd used so many of the right hospital drugs that there was no question of it being a cry for help - it was a clearly planned suicide attempt.

Oh that is distressing blackberry
I know a hospital doctor who collected the needed drugs but didn't go through with it - they went to their GP and confessed. It must be so easy if you have access.

I don’t think turning everything off is a U.K. thing. My American BIL and his equally American girlfriend recently stayed in our holiday home. When we arrived three weeks after they left they had turned off everything including the freezer full of food.

Has anyone left workers at their house whilst away?? 😬
I may not want to read this thread right now.

What is it with turning things off when you go away? Is this a UK thing?

Could it be because we are on 240 volts as compared to the 110 in the US?
My toaster actually has ‘unplug when not in use, fire hazard’ written on the plug.

Yes sanmiguel I have. It was ok. Enjoy your hol and deal with any problems when you get back.

Mine had built a wall three feet across from where it was supposed to be on the plans, but took it down and built it correctly when I got back. Silly sods.

Not quite the same but my grandad came home from school to find out his parents had moved house whilst he was out at school. Neighbour saw him struggling to get in the house and had to tell him!

My parents went to Canada over Christmas and came home to a burst pipe, water everywhere and kitchen ceiling destroyed. Dm wanted to leave heating on constant at 10 degrees but df felt that was unnecessary and put it on 10 degrees for 2 hours a day. Dm still mentions it a lot as df is "frugal" but it doesn't always pay off!

Returned in the middle of the night to a jackdaw flying round my house.

It had come down the chimney, and by the quantity of jackdaw shit discovered in daylight over every surface of the house, clearly several days earlier. It had been living on the contents of my fruit bowl.

It was terrified, I was terrified, and a jackdaw in the dark in full flap is positive horror movie stuff. It was like a scene from The Birds.

I got my neighbour up and he successfully trapped it in a blanket and released it.

Had another jackdaw incident, plus a chimney fire with the massacre of the jackdaws before finally got the birdguard to end all birdguards on the chimney - no problems since.

The insurance claim was excellent though - that jackdaw shit got me loads of new stuff

The most recent one was 3 years ago when I returned from a trip to cornwall, it had taken 10 hours to drive home die to an accident on the 303. When I opened my front door my kitchen ceiling was missing. I had s new bathroom fitted 6 months before and it turns out he had misquoted the shower screen and overflow and whilst I was away it had finally gone after the 6 months of persistent drips. He was a cowboy though and never came to fix it.
The second was 20 years ago when I was renting a room. I had been sent to work abroad weekly but was still paying full rent etc. One week I came home early to find someone else in my bed. The landlady had been sub letting my room. She had also been borrowing my clothes. When I left a week or so later she tried to get me to pay half a phone bill. When I pointed out ot was impossible I had made the calls as I was out the country ( this was in the days of landlines) and only would pay what I had used and she should count herself lucky after the sublet incident she turned nasty.

Used to keep 3 cat litter trays in the cellar. Went away for a week leaving enough food and water for the 2 cats. For some reason DH closed the cellar door before we left. Came home to the awful stench of cat poo and wee. Given that they hadn't had access to the cellar, they had decided to use a beautiful wool rug as their toilet for the week.

This thread needs a trigger warning! I may never leave the house again!

Ours are small potatoes compared to these:

Dead pigeon down the dining room chimney with stench and accompanying swarm of blowflies. 🤮

Friend feeding the cat - of the ecowarrior disposition - went round switching off all the sockets and devices on standby, including our cable box which was set to record all our favourite shows whilst we were away (before catch-up was a thing). 😩

Came back from a bank holiday weekend away, DD 17 had supposedly stayed at a friend's. She greeted us at the door and I couldn't understand why the hall floor was absolutely filthy. Unusually for me I had cleaned my way out of the house so everything would be clean when we got back ready for school and work the next day.
As I walked through to the (new!) kitchen I saw the kickboards lying on the filthy floor and it dawned on me that she had had a party. Blatantly lying to me when we had been talking and texting over the weekend.

All our beds had been slept in, I found shoes, broken glass and condoms upstairs. My 7 year old's uniform had been hung up ready for school only someone had been sick and used that to mop it up. It felt like we had been burgled knowing all these strangers had been in our home and treated it like that. Lots of other things I could list, the house was trashed.
It was a very strange feeling of fury and betrayal and to be honest 6 years later I'm still pissed off at her about it!

I can't believe people claim on their insurance for defrosted food

My freezer broke once and I lost around £500 worth of food. Not a sum of money I can find in a hurry to restock, and as a lot of it was stuff I'd batch-cooked to freeze, you have to add on the value of the time and cost of cooking it. Of course I claimed, it was included in the insurance, and that's what insurance is for.

The worst thing I came back to was simply the fire alarms bleeping due to batteries going. But I think I'll just double check what my insurance covers and teak if necessary.

When friends of ours went away the teenage son threw a party. Quite apart from the spilled drinks/broken glass etc that might be expected from an unsupervised party there was an added dimension of mess. For some reason one of the guests wandered through the house scattering handfuls of rice from a massive tub he found in the larder. That was over 10 years ago and stray grains of rice still surface in unexpected nooks and crannies.