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Home and utilities

Switching electricity, gas, or water supplier should be easy: pick the offer, send the data, wait for the switch, and enjoy the adult sensation of having done something administrative without losing half a day. Then comes a final bill with estimated usage, strange readings, or amounts looking like a random number generator output. The smart move is documenting your meter reading before the switch, with photos, video, contract data, and orderly communications. Before switch date, photograph meter, prepare a summary, and timestamp main files with ExistBefore.

  1. How to prove your meter reading before switching suppliers.

    Switching electricity, gas, or water supplier should be easy: pick the offer, send the data, wait for the switch, and enjoy the adult sensation of having done something administrative without losing half a day. Then comes a final bill with estimated usage, strange readings, or…

  2. How to prove the existence of insured valuables before a theft

    When a valuable item vanishes, the question arrives as punctual as a thunderstorm on moving day: "Can you prove you actually owned it?". That's when you discover the jewellery was in a blurry 2016 photo, the computer had its receipt in a closed email inbox, the bike had its…

  3. How to prove that home renovation work is stalled

    A stalled building site is instantly recognisable: bags of cement motionless like statues, ladders leaning for days in the same spot, half-full buckets, dangling wires, and that surreal silence where drills, hammers, and builders should have been. At first you think "it's a…

  4. How to protect a rental deposit when handing over keys

    Key handover is that moment when everyone smiles, someone checks the intercom, the bunch of keys jingles like in an important scene, and meanwhile, the deposit watches everyone from the back of the room saying: "Remember me". To truly protect it, you must document property…

  5. How to document water leak or building damage

    A water leak in the house never arrives politely. First a suspicious stain appears on the ceiling, then plaster bubbles, then you smell that heavy, damp scent, half cellar and half plumbing disaster. In the most heroic cases, if a drain is involved, the air takes an olfactory…

  6. How to document unauthorised occupation of private spaces

    Unauthorised occupation of a private space can start almost comically: a bike left "just for today" in your spot, boxes appearing in the cellar, a car permanently parked in front of your garage, a neighbour expanding their kingdom of pots, chairs, and tools like a landing…

  7. How to document an alien invasion preventing you from fulfilling tenant duties

    Let's immediately put the tin foil hat in the right drawer: if you truly cannot fulfil a duty because house, street, neighbourhood, connection, systems, or accesses are blocked by an exceptional event, the useful thing is documenting the concrete impediment. Whether you call it…