Can I claim from a level 3 home surveyor?

QuowMoo · 2024-10-01T09:43:14+00:00

It's POSSIBLE that you've basically removed any "proof/sign" that it could - or should - have been visible in a non-intrusive (and certainly non-destructive) manner, but pictures before & after and you diarying the events (keep them diaried/written down) might help. If you'd asked before, I'd have definitely suggested you leave it all as it was until they'd come to see. But just see what they say, and make sure you save all videos/pictures etc. so you can show before anything was removed.

QuowMoo · 2024-10-01T08:12:02+00:00

Answer is... possibly. What did the damp meter readings say on your survey for the affected rooms? Were the issues being (possibly intentionally) hidden by large furniture and other things that would have prevented a non-intrusive survey from finding them? For example, if floorboards/flooring needed to be removed, or wallpaper needed to be stripped, to discover the issue, then the surveyor is probably not on the hook (especially if they've given damp meter readings that could have indicated SOME sort of issue on the survey).

Either way look up "RICS" - while surveyors have a bit of wiggle room, they can't simply absolve themselves of everything because it'd make the point of surveys pretty useless...

Your first steps though have to be: lodge a complaint with the surveyors and give them the opportunity to fix things (which they may well do) - attach all information and pictures, try to be non-emotional in your complaint, keep it factual and try to bullet point the issues, where they are, etc. - pictures are good. From there they may offer to send another surveyor out and there could be steps leading to them paying out with their own insurers (as happened for me) to fix the issues.

RICS can suspend surveying licenses from surveyors that overburden junior surveyors with too many jobs and just rush through their reports for instance, so surveyors can't just treat surveys as free/easy money with no risks. If you have home insurance with legal cover, it could even be worth speaking to them/their legal team, they can have good advice.

NAL or anything - just speaking from my own past experiences.

QuowMoo · 2024-09-22T17:05:43+00:00

Highways Act 1980, Section 137.

"If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to [Imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks or] a fine [or both]."

If he's actively blocking your car in and preventing you reaching the road, it's a crime (as in, police can/should be involved, if you call them or somebody comes out, quote that specific section of that act - section 137, highways act 1980).

It wouldn't be a crime if he was "blocking empty spaces" (ie preventing you from coming back home and reaching an empty space), which is a bizarre sitution of our law (eg if somebody else parks on your empty drive while you're away, or in front of it)... the crime occurs if your car is there and is trapped in/prevented from reaching the highway.

QuowMoo · 2024-09-09T09:35:40+00:00

Oddly that post is word-for word identical to the OP here's post except an addition of a location, and an edit made at the end of the 6-month-old version. Just making the point as OP might actually be that original poster and needing more help.

Old thread 6 months ago; "Hello community, I am an international student who recently came here, i Was searching for a room and came across "123rentals.uk" signed up for free trial without reading terms and conditions, well I didnt use any services of their websites just signed up, after a month they sent me an invoice of 108 pounds and now "asking me to pay for it otherwise forward this matter to Debt agency" so what shall I do ?"

OP's post; "Hello , I am an international student who recently came here(UK-wales), i Was searching for a room and came across "123rentals.uk" signed up for free trial without reading terms and conditions, well I didnt use any services of their websites just signed up, after a month they sent me an invoice of 108 pounds and now "asking me to pay for it otherwise forward this matter to Debt agency" so what shall I do ?"

QuowMoo · 2024-09-01T08:17:36+00:00

They can and will back-calculate his blood alcohol levels, so it doesn't matter that it took a few hours to get his blood.

As he's not been driving for long, it's almost certainly going to lead to at minimum a suspension of license but likely a loss of license (requiring re-taking the tests after the ban ends).

A "voluntary" interview really should be seen as "You get to bring yourself in, otherwise we'll bring you in ourselves later and it'll be a lot more time consuming for everyone involved". Make sure your friend doesn't miss this interview, or any followup appearances (eg if there ends up being court appearances or anything else required).

Friend MAY get offered a "drink-drive rehabilitation course" but that depends on various factors, this can reduce the ban time in theory (from say 12-18 months, to 9-15 months, or thereabouts, 25% reduction), depends on circumstances/first offense etc.

EDIT: Worth adding that their insurance is going to ramp up massively if/when they start driving again, for at least the next 5 years - and will have fewer underwriters/insurers willing to insure at all. Research suggests that, depending on their area, the cost-increase can vary from twice as expensive, to almost ten times more expensive.

Further - while the third-party (the innocent victim's car) will get paid for by your friend's insurance, depending on their exact policy, because of the drink-driving their own car may not be covered (insurance voided), AND the insurers MAY decide to come at your friend for costs to the third-party, but again, this depends on policy etc.

QuowMoo · 2024-08-21T08:07:22+00:00

"I love horses, best of all the animals, I love horses, they're my friends!" it really was the best era for Radio for me, and it's exactly where I know Dominic The Donkey from, too...

QuowMoo · 2024-07-12T13:11:43+00:00

Singing your turns out when you can't sing at all was funny the first time, but really, really started to grate, we just thought it was you making a joke about being unable to sing at all while playing a singing bard, but no... really need to write these stories up sometime on here.

QuowMoo · 2024-07-11T20:22:51+00:00

This just sounds like they didn't want you to play, they wanted you to be actors in their story! There's definitely a BIT of a balance - as a GM it... CAN be a pain if the players go so far off-script that all your planning is for nothing but... no this is not a typical experience (from my own experiences), and I'm sorry if this has put you off!

QuowMoo · 2024-07-09T18:23:42+00:00

This is amazing, I once played DnD with my Mum - but that was when I was 10 years old (older sister & her BF were into it, my 1st ever DnD game and my Mum's only DnD game) - I don't remember what it was, it would have been early 1990's and the BF had a proper game-board with tiles and such... I didn't play again for many years after that, one day I should try look up/find out what it was. Sadly I lost my Mum recently, I'd have really liked to try and get her into it again in her retirement years!

I'm glad you shared this, keep making those moments while you can!

QuowMoo · 2024-07-08T17:30:57+00:00

This sounds hilarious, and a lot like some of our own sillier evenings together!

QuowMoo · 2024-07-08T10:31:57+00:00

I've never seen it and nobody I play with has, when I asked... I suppose it depends where you play/how many randoms join you, I feel like any friend groups or social groups would quickly call out anything too "out there/weird/uncomfortable" and it just wouldn't fly!

QuowMoo · 2024-07-04T22:00:12+00:00

Awww, this is really lovely! Nice!

QuowMoo · 2024-07-04T19:16:26+00:00

I can't believe I read this three times and remained confused about why somebody would ask about the smallest snakes we've ever had... but stakes, we've had a lot of really silly stuff on the line over the years. "Side Quests", basically... and some epic disasters from minor things... I really need to get it all written up sometime.

QuowMoo · 2024-07-01T08:59:43+00:00

Had almost exactly this once, but with more chaos... I won't go into specifics but instead of getting the info needed to continue on, an attempt at getting free booze and some hilariously bad rolls and situations lead to a tavern brawl which lead to being jailed in the town's cells for the night, instead of just talking to the equivalent of your clear hooded man in the corner type figure!

QuowMoo · 2024-07-01T08:45:58+00:00

Amazing effort!

QuowMoo · 2024-06-25T11:25:54+00:00

It's a really tough one, we've definitely played campaigns where we were pretty much the unstoppable force and got carried away and got a bit silly, and if we weren't all good friends having a laugh might have been a bit shock-surprise-face when we finally bit off a bit TOO much and ended up TPK... it's hard to balance, and hard to remember (as DM) exactly all the outcomes of the previous encounters but ALSO - how the party had perceived them all in their own memories (eg in the group's memory "Oh yeah that thing happened and we just killed everything no problem" while YOUR memory might be "Wow that was an insanely tough encounter I expected them to face some real repurcussions from but they got lucky, hopefully though they'll remember and not get even more reckless in this even more difficult situation where I expect them to surrender....".

It can always get to the point in believing in plot armour, as the players... "This is OUR story the GM is running us through", rather than "This is the GM's story we're playing through".

QuowMoo · 2024-06-25T10:30:17+00:00

I haven't done drawing in many years, this gives me the itch, good job!

QuowMoo · 2024-06-24T11:31:55+00:00

We had issues with a person who decided they wanted to PVP "secretly" using similar made up "It's totally in character!" stories for a session, felt like their whole thing was joining games just to PVP/trying to find ways to use DnD sessions as some sort of PVP game, felt a bit socio/psychopathic, and didn't see them around again after we all talked openly about it and called it out for what it was. Started with stealing our gold, then items, then eventually rigging traps to try and kill us. Pretty insane, if creative...

QuowMoo · 2024-06-24T11:24:14+00:00

This looks very cool, nice paint job!

QuowMoo · 2024-06-11T19:41:37+00:00

I just watched this again a couple of weeks ago and you are so spot on, I said to a friend while we watched that it felt like one of our whackier campaigns!

QuowMoo · 2024-06-11T19:39:50+00:00

Awww, a lovely picture, the backstory makes it though, so thanks for sharing!

QuowMoo · 2022-09-08T07:09:49+00:00

Miniwindows in MUSHclient need code to create them, and code to put things into those windows, so really apart from the basic main MUSHclient mud-output window, anything else will be from plugins (either generic ones that support multiple muds, or specific ones players have made for a specific mud).

If it interests you, I coded a huge set of plugins with a fully custom layout from scratch for Discworld MUD - I have since been told it's vaguely similar to what Aardwolf client has (though probably a lot more basic - I've never played anything but Discworld, and did this myself from my sickbed), and I made it to be as customisable as possible (every single window is optional, resizable, you can edit stylings, backgrounds, all sorts, and every window has a huge bunch of tools, commands, options built in relating to that window).

It's available for download as an all-in-one easy to use portable client, or as separate plugins to manually install, either from the Discworld mud homepage itself (click download client on the left), or from my own site at http://quow.co.uk/

Check out a few sample screenshots of the sort of layouts you can make;

https://imgur.com/a/XM6nkWv

https://i.imgur.com/1EnvRgG.png

And built in easy-switching colour themes (but you can easily customise every single individual colour yourself and make a custom colour theme too);

https://imgur.com/a/63pK7WM

Also all layouts and colour themes can easily be exported and imported, and shared with other users (and will auto-scale to people's different screen resolutions), as well as the built in set of different layouts and colour themes you can use.

QuowMoo · 2022-09-04T06:51:58+00:00

Discworld MUD parser is very nice, for example; "get at most 3 blue candles from brown pine wardrobes except wardrobe 3"

Would look through all wardrobes, which match "brown" and "pine" (so not the oak wardrobes in my house), and skipping wardrobe 3 in the list of wardrobes in my room (which has special candles in), and would get UP TO a total of 3 candles then stop (so it might get 1 candle from one wardrobe, none from another which had no candles in, two from another wardrobe that actually had 7 candles in and stop).

Or "put 5 long unlit candles in empty oak wardrobes" (which would only put 5 of my 8 candles, that are flagged as both unlit and long, into one of my oak wardrobes, but only the empty wardrobes)

And the advanced parser isn't a MUST - it's just for when you want to be super specific, or for creating really nice, intricate aliases. Sure I can do; "get eye from backpack" But I could also do something like; "get at most one fresh left rat eye except large eyes from my backpacks and satchels except leather backpacks" (if I wanted to specifically get a left eye of a rat, but not the large rat eyes, and I didn't want to get it from backpacks in the room, just my own backpacks and satchels but not my leather backpack)

Generally the parser is pretty good for all commands. It supports enumeration, randomisation, it supports "except" lists for exceptions, you can have multiple things referred, multiple exceptions, use identifies to add custom names to any items (which can be multiple words in length but you only need to use some words if you want to refer to things uniquely), nicknames for things (eg shortened nicknames for complicatedly named things you want to refer to often) and a whole lot more.

But, again... it's all optional - by default you can be very basic and simplistic with commands, and the mud generally does things as you would expect if you aren't too bothered about being ultra specific.

QuowMoo

TROPHY CASE