Skyrim - Riften House/Thane/Thieves

I mentioned the Skooma Quest bug in Skyrim and how that was preventing me from buying property which was also preventing me being a Thane and (I believe) preventing me becoming the head of the Thieves Guild. Well while starting the Dark Brotherhood Quests I was taken near to the Cavern causing the problem and popped in to check if the one person had respawned. He had and I took him out.

Imagine my surprise when it told me I'd finished the Skooma Quest and should talk to the Jarl of Riften. Yay! Over to there and due to the time she was heading off to her, locked, chambers for rest. I managed to get a word and was told that I couldn't be a Thane until I owned property. No problem. I found the steward and bought some property. In the meantime the Jarl had retired. So with nothing to do until the morning and while I was there I upgraded my property with the steward and paid it a visit. Not bad.

I returned to the Jarl and hung around for a bit. When she finally reappeared I conversed with her. Nope didn't know who I was and I most certainly got no Thane options. What the hell?

Checked online and oh yeah another known bug - upgrade your property before talking to the Jarl and she won't acknowledge it.

Oh yeah I need to reload a previous save - oh hell that's not going to be good. See I saved as I left the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary on the first contract. As I could fast travel it was a case of travel, kill; travel, kill; travel, kill; return, turn in; do internal quest, get another quest. Travel, kill, travel, kill, return. Get Quest, travel, get stuff, return, get sent to Riften. Hence me passing by the cavern. All in all about two hour's worth of play. Luckily there's the autosaves all four of them.... yeah:

Enter Jarl's palace. Autosave in palace.
Buy propery upgrade (bad thing)
Leave Jarl's palace. Autosave
Enter my new property Autosave
Leave my new property Autosave.
Enter palace overwrite the first autosave before I did the bad thing.... oh crap.

So yeah the only save I had was from the start of my session that night. Once again it seems no-one considered that while talking to the steward that can sell you property, players might decide to upgrade that property while they're still in conversation with the very same steward who handles that.

Now this is why I normally keep two different well spaced saves. Awesome.

Awesome.