Soldato
Hey all,
Need a bit of advise please. Time scales may be off as I cannot remember exactly when everything occurred, my apologies!
I own (well have a mortgage on) an apartment/flat and have done for nearly 4 years now. As part of the agreement, we were to pay £550 per year maintenance, and £125 per year ground rent.
As a bit of background information, for the first period of well over 2 years that I lived here, no one once contacted me, or the other residents of any other flats, asking me for the money for the maintenance. I did the right thing and saved this money for the day that they did.
Fast forward to the day that they did ask for the money to be paid all in one sum or to pay monthly or quarterly etc. They had put the costs up, and each year that they asked for had a different break down of costs per item that the other years. Obviously I understand that labour and electricity cost different every year so this isn't a major issue.
I queried a few things, the main one being a "car park charge" to which when asked about they couldn't tell me what it was for, as we own our spaces and are responsible for them. Also the road was still a development site and so the maintenance company didn't do anything on it anyway. Therefore they were requesting our money for nothing, and they admitted this. I also made it known that many things were not fixed or working as they should despite several called logged/emails sent, and thus I wouldn't pay until they were resolved. The site manager was fine with this and was adamant to get them resolved.
Nothing happened for a few weeks until I had a reminder letter asking for the sum of money again, along with a new admin fee of £100 on top for said letter. I contacted the site manager for an update to fix things and said I won't be paying this additional admin fee, to which he said it's just the finance department's automatic response. He would get it removed. The same thing happened again following weeks later, and another £100 admin charge was added. Repeat process of contact with site manager and eventually a period of time afterwards, issues were resolved.
So as the car park charges were false, and the admin charges were to be removed, I paid the full amount, bar these charges. I was told this was fine by the site manager and all would be resolved and I owed no more money.
Last year I received a higher bill once again, but this time again with car park charges that no one could explain, and a very very high electricity bill, much higher than the other blocks. Which given that we only have lighting and everyone else had heating and lighting, was dubious. So I paid the full year's amount bar the car park charges and only half the electricity bill, in the idea that the site manager was to check out what was wrong with our such high usage of electricity. We then had an AGM called so we could all get together to see if anything could be improved. At this AGM it was revealed that our electricity was reading too high, and it has now been resolved, and that I only owed a small amount of money which would be added to next years (this years) bill. Some others are/were paying monthly and so their payments would be adjusted accordingly.
Hello 2012! End of January receive the bill for the maintenance, which isn't too bad this year, but still a bit more than expected. Plus this bill included admin fees from previous years, plus the previous arrears that we had agreed not to pay for (car park charges.) So my bill stands at nearly £900 for this year to be paid?! Immediately contacted the site manager complaining about this, and requested for it to be resolved. He called me, asked me to ignore the admin fees and the previous years stuff, he would resolve it. Just ensured that I knew I still owed some electricity from last year, and then all of this years money.
In a punt to reduce our costs for this year, the site manager agreed that should we all sign a letter stating that we no longer wish to have the block cleaned and that we would take care of it ourselves, we could have the money taken off the bill and the service removed. I took charge of this and did it straight away, and sent it off. Everyone was happy, and everyone was holding off full payment until this had been removed. Yet unfortunately 2 months down the line we all received a bill reminder, plus another £100 admin charge. My bill was now up to nearly £1000. Site manager is not responding to my calls, nor my emails.
Today! I receive a legal letter from a solicitors firm stating I must pay within 14 days of the date of said letter dated 11/04/2012 a total of just less than £1000, and another £106 for their fees for sending me the letter.
I now feel as though I must pay this money ASAP to avoid further costs, even though I know that I don't owe that money, but I don't feel as if I have any way to argue back in such a short period of time, without incurring more costs.
Some advice please?! I really thought everything was all hunky dory with the maintenance company last year and I was clear of any debt with them.
Apologies for the life story...
Need a bit of advise please. Time scales may be off as I cannot remember exactly when everything occurred, my apologies!
I own (well have a mortgage on) an apartment/flat and have done for nearly 4 years now. As part of the agreement, we were to pay £550 per year maintenance, and £125 per year ground rent.
As a bit of background information, for the first period of well over 2 years that I lived here, no one once contacted me, or the other residents of any other flats, asking me for the money for the maintenance. I did the right thing and saved this money for the day that they did.
Fast forward to the day that they did ask for the money to be paid all in one sum or to pay monthly or quarterly etc. They had put the costs up, and each year that they asked for had a different break down of costs per item that the other years. Obviously I understand that labour and electricity cost different every year so this isn't a major issue.
I queried a few things, the main one being a "car park charge" to which when asked about they couldn't tell me what it was for, as we own our spaces and are responsible for them. Also the road was still a development site and so the maintenance company didn't do anything on it anyway. Therefore they were requesting our money for nothing, and they admitted this. I also made it known that many things were not fixed or working as they should despite several called logged/emails sent, and thus I wouldn't pay until they were resolved. The site manager was fine with this and was adamant to get them resolved.
Nothing happened for a few weeks until I had a reminder letter asking for the sum of money again, along with a new admin fee of £100 on top for said letter. I contacted the site manager for an update to fix things and said I won't be paying this additional admin fee, to which he said it's just the finance department's automatic response. He would get it removed. The same thing happened again following weeks later, and another £100 admin charge was added. Repeat process of contact with site manager and eventually a period of time afterwards, issues were resolved.
So as the car park charges were false, and the admin charges were to be removed, I paid the full amount, bar these charges. I was told this was fine by the site manager and all would be resolved and I owed no more money.
Last year I received a higher bill once again, but this time again with car park charges that no one could explain, and a very very high electricity bill, much higher than the other blocks. Which given that we only have lighting and everyone else had heating and lighting, was dubious. So I paid the full year's amount bar the car park charges and only half the electricity bill, in the idea that the site manager was to check out what was wrong with our such high usage of electricity. We then had an AGM called so we could all get together to see if anything could be improved. At this AGM it was revealed that our electricity was reading too high, and it has now been resolved, and that I only owed a small amount of money which would be added to next years (this years) bill. Some others are/were paying monthly and so their payments would be adjusted accordingly.
Hello 2012! End of January receive the bill for the maintenance, which isn't too bad this year, but still a bit more than expected. Plus this bill included admin fees from previous years, plus the previous arrears that we had agreed not to pay for (car park charges.) So my bill stands at nearly £900 for this year to be paid?! Immediately contacted the site manager complaining about this, and requested for it to be resolved. He called me, asked me to ignore the admin fees and the previous years stuff, he would resolve it. Just ensured that I knew I still owed some electricity from last year, and then all of this years money.
In a punt to reduce our costs for this year, the site manager agreed that should we all sign a letter stating that we no longer wish to have the block cleaned and that we would take care of it ourselves, we could have the money taken off the bill and the service removed. I took charge of this and did it straight away, and sent it off. Everyone was happy, and everyone was holding off full payment until this had been removed. Yet unfortunately 2 months down the line we all received a bill reminder, plus another £100 admin charge. My bill was now up to nearly £1000. Site manager is not responding to my calls, nor my emails.
Today! I receive a legal letter from a solicitors firm stating I must pay within 14 days of the date of said letter dated 11/04/2012 a total of just less than £1000, and another £106 for their fees for sending me the letter.
I now feel as though I must pay this money ASAP to avoid further costs, even though I know that I don't owe that money, but I don't feel as if I have any way to argue back in such a short period of time, without incurring more costs.
Some advice please?! I really thought everything was all hunky dory with the maintenance company last year and I was clear of any debt with them.
Apologies for the life story...