Living in a city-owned housing (while paying unregulated market-based rent for it):
Oh, it's 5 degrees below zero. We should turn the heating on... hmm looks like the heating doesn't work.
Let's ask the building management company (owned by city) to fix it.
They say that the new problem reporting process is only available via their phone app... so now we have to install the app... it asks for email, phone number, rental contract number, enter all data... okay now it says that we should enter the confirmation code they'll send us by snail mail. Also the app only lets you to enter the confirmation code no earlier than one week after it was requested.
A week later: finally entering the code into the app, going to the "report a problem" screen, tapping on "I want to report a problem", getting "to report a problem, you should call this phone number". Fuck. Okay, calling the phone number; of course they only speak German; telling them that we, living at this specific address, don't have heating (even though hot water works); their response is "yes, we're aware of the problem, we're working on it". "When will we get the heating back?" - "Oh in a couple of days, please have some patience". Very weird that it could be a problem they're aware of, given that we only get a single pipe entering our apartment used both for heating and for hot water (so the problem is most likely in our apartment and cannot be anything global).
Several days later: the heating is not back, but there are news that the district heating plant on the other end of the city, serving an entirely different district on the other end of the city, happened to be broken on the day we called. I guess the person answering our call didn't bother to actually check our address and see that we live 20km away from the affected area.
Okay, calling them again (and once again of course they only speak German), "thank you for reporting the problem, the experts will call you back".
A week later, in very early morning: an incoming phone from another company call telling us, in German, that shortly we should receive an email with two sample photos; and that they want us to reply to that email with similar photos we should take of our heating system.
Next day, an email arrives from that other company, we promptly make the required photos and send them in response. Silence.
A few days later, we send another reply to that email, still silence.
Finally, another week later: "thank you for the photos, we have registered your problem, now go and call this phone number of a third company to request that repair person comes to take a look and diagnose the problem".
Calling that phone number: "the number you have dialed is not assigned".

At least it's not -20 or -30 outside...

(And the next December I guess we'll receive the usual 2+k euro heating bill for 2025)

@IngaLovinde heating not working is something you can cut your rent over, although it is extremely understandable to not want to do that

@charlotte yeah I guess the next step would be sending them an official complaint requesting a rent reduction.
(But also, we pay more for utilities than many people pay for rent...)

@IngaLovinde is there an option to call your own service and make them pay for it?

@byte not with our level of German, that would probably just get us additionally fucked over modifying the equipment outside the boundaries of our rental contract.

(And calling another service is probably going to be a similar level of PITA.)

@IngaLovinde @charlotte if the temperature inside is below 15℃, the place counts as uninhabitable, and you’re entitled to alternative accommodation that the landlord has to pay for

@uint8_t @charlotte it's not below 15⁰ thankfully

@IngaLovinde @uint8_t as someone who has been needlessly moved into replacement housing before it was not good ™

@IngaLovinde @uint8_t the worst part is that this meano the replacement unit didn’t go to people who needed it

but our landlady absolutely wouldn’t let us stay uphill from a flood area with genuinely 1 house in the neighborhood whose basement got flooded due to the sewers being full

Yay, someone woke us up in extremely early morning and fixed the heating!

Now we'll be freezing our asses off not by necessity (broken heating) but by choice (have you seen the prices?)

> ... so now we have to install the app... it asks for email, phone number, rental contract number, enter all data... okay now it says that we should enter the confirmation code they'll send us by *snail mail*.

@IngaLovinde i'm sorry, what??? 😭😭

i mean i know germany loves snail mail (i haven't seen a postal letter in my life) but they got the rental contract number and other PII??

@fumnanya but they still have to make sure it's actually us and not just someone who saw our rental contract once!