By the way, rental properties in Australia come with no furniture (just the rooms), with the furniture, or with no furniture but what they call “white goods,” fridge, washing machine, and so on.
Most of the properties that can be used for holidays, like condominiums, do come with furniture, but most of the houses and apartments in residential areas come with no furniture. If you rent a property with furniture or white goods and they break down, the real estate agent will arrange a new item for you. But my place came without furniture, so it is up to me to take care of any breakdowns.
I digress but my fridge had a lot of things that would smell if they rotted, like malted rice, natto, dried young sardines, meat, and rice bran for rice bran pickles in Ziplock bags (LOL). The more time passed, the worse the smell and the rotting would become… Amid all that and the already smelly home, my very dependable and kind friend threw out the food that had rotted in the freezer and the fridge and cleaned up. I am truly grateful to my friend for doing that. Disposing of rotten food is a job no one wants to do.
I came back home from Japan in early February when it was mid-summer in Australia. First thing, rather than unpacking my suitcase, I went to buy a fridge. I had looked at the websites of a few electrical appliance shops beforehand, but I am the sort who prefers to get a feeling for the real-life size, take a look inside, and talk with the shop staff, rather than just buying on the internet. Plus, I end up negotiating a further discount when I’m there. I went to an electrical appliance shop called The Good Guys, asked the shop attendant about this and that, got a discount, and managed to buy a fridge without any problems.
My biggest concern was getting rid of the old fridge. It was going to be $85 for a service called Premium Delivery where they take away your old fridge when they deliver the new one.
There is a garbage treatment plant 15 minutes by car from my place where I can get rid of bulk garbage items for free, but I didn’t have anyone to carry the old fridge or a car that the fridge would fit into, so I took care of it quickly and easily with money.
Delivery alone would have been $55, so getting them to take the old one away for an extra $30 is about as cheap as it gets in Australia, where prices are so high.
Plus, they had the fridge in stock at the shop, so they could deliver it the next day. I didn’t know such a handy service was available in Australia.
I got a message on my mobile phone saying “Your delivery will arrive between 1:00 and 5:00 pm tomorrow. The driver may contact you once they are nearby, so please be sure to check your mobile phone regularly.” I work from home, so waiting was no problem at all.
But by 4:30 the next afternoon, there had been no contact from them at all. When I clicked on the link in their message it showed the driver’s name, photo, and mobile phone number, so I decided to give the driver a call. I got the automated message, “The number you have called is not available.” Well, that’s something you often get in Australia. It was already getting close to 5:00, but the shop where I bought the fridge closes at 5:00, so I quickly called and asked them whether the delivery would come today. They said the delivery was a little late, but they thought it would arrive in about 30 minutes. I was expecting them to say it was already late and the driver couldn’t make it today, so it was lucky that the delivery would arrive. It didn’t matter at all even if it was late. When you live in Australia, you start to feel that even late is good enough.
Around 6:00 I heard a truck pulling up outside my place, so I went outside and found there were 2 Indian men taking a fridge out of a big cardboard box. The team of 2 carried the new fridge into my place and took out the old one.
I hadn’t moved the fridge for a number of years and the floor where it had been standing was quite dirty, but I had already gotten into the gap underneath with something like a Quickle Wiper (wiper mop) to clean it the day before, but there was still quite a lot of dust and dirt towards the back. I asked them to let me clean it up a bit and they did the right thing and waited while I wiped the floor.
The 2 men were in their early 30s or so and were in Australia on student visas. I tried to talk to them, but they couldn’t speak much English, and it seemed to me that they were concentrated exclusively on carrying the things they were asked to carry to the places they were asked to deliver them to. Their mobile phones were turned off, so I called the shop to find out exactly what was happening with the delivery, which turned out to be the right thing to do. All the same, they took care of carrying the fridge, and although they were late, they did come as they should have, so I was very satisfied with the outcome. That meant I could finally buy some vegetables, meat, and fish, plus I could enjoy a proper cold beer (LOL). I had been living my life taking the fridge for granted every day, so this episode brought home to me the gratitude I felt for having a fridge in the middle of summer.
That is more or less what happened from the time I bought the fridge until it was delivered.
Maybe I was just lucky that it arrived the day after I bought it.
If ever you are waiting for something to be delivered in Australia, please be patient without getting your hopes up.
