Factor's Charges

captainhaggis

eco-friendly wrote: »

We'll be writing to them AGAIN. I requested way back if they would change all the lamps in the one go to save labour costs, (the filaments are about £3.00) and was told Sorry! they can't do that.:(

*****

Can't they just give one of the residents the filaments/bulbs/whatever and let them replace them!? Isn't it that easy?! I'm sure there'd be no shortage of volunteers if they're charging you such expensive labour costs.

Jowo_2

I'm in a block of 8 flats in a tenement who have switched from self-factoring to factoring.

Our first 6 month invoice is £480 but £270 of that is buildings insurance so it looks like if we continue like this, our annual charge (including insurance) will work out around £60 per month.

There's nothing inflated about the invoices we've been sent apart from the buildings insurance which I think could be a bit cheaper.

Problems they've fixed have included rats in the loft, leaking roof, smashed glass in the front door, broken lock in the front door, tidying up the backcourt, blocked drains and burst pipes, broken stair lights.

And to be honest, they were fairly similar to the type of problems we were having to fix when we were self-factored (having a bit of a ground hog day to as we had a lot of the same issues in the previous year or two) and the invoices from them for similar repairs compare well to historic charges.

Jowo_2

scottishblondie wrote: »

I can understand why a lot of people think self-factoring would be better, but in reality, especially in a big development, it would probably be just as bad. We thought about self-factoring in my building, but the truth is too many of the flats are rented out, people are too busy, others don't care.

Spot on. Out of 8 owners in my block, at one point, two weren't paying towards repairs, at least one flat had no building insurance (but probably two flats at least) and despite there being around 14 adults in the block, only 3 would actually help out with sorting out maintenance issues - the rest used to report them and sit back and expect me to do them.

The ones who wouldn't pay were often the fussiest about how the money was being spent (the money they hadn't provided to the owners association where they weren't lifting a finger...)

Fire_Fox

eco-friendly wrote: »

How about £6.70 each in a block of six just to replace a stair light? last time I was there two where flickering like mad.

We'll be writing to them AGAIN. I requested way back if they would change all the lamps in the one go to save labour costs, (the filaments are about £3.00) and was told Sorry! they can't do that.:(

*****

We are a block of fifteen flats and were charged almost £1500 for lighting in one year alone: this is parts only, labour is charged separately. I looked on eBay for the price of identical branded bulbs and then did some maths ... they would have had to change every bulb in the entire building twice a week to spend that much. :eek: The management company refused to investigate and I refused to pay my service charges.

captainhaggis wrote: »

Can't they just give one of the residents the filaments/bulbs/whatever and let them replace them!? Isn't it that easy?! I'm sure there'd be no shortage of volunteers if they're charging you such expensive labour costs.

Health and safety. You can't have lights out for weeks and someone falling down the stairs in the dark, or electrocuting themselves changing a bulb or deciding to use their kitchen chair instead of a proper ladder.