I am livid - just landed on £520 bill for nothing!

Colin_London

Unfortunately most large communal systems (i.e. for blocks of more than a handful of flats) require changing because in analogue days they transponded the incoming signals onto new frequencies to prevent interference being picked up on the long cable runs around the blocks. For digital TV this arrangement needs to be changed, and new antennas / some clever levelling filters may have to be installed. Some of these may need to be tweaked a few times as channels in use change before they reach their final configuration after switchover. It may be that the downleads to each flat may indeed have needed replacing if they were very old, and this would be a significant part of the capital cost.

However, £1 a week each for 10 years for every one of the residents in a block is a significant amount of money. As with a lot of communal works that are arranged for residents without their direct involvement, there can be concern that the best value and most appropriate service was procured.

If I was asked to pay this sort of money I would want to know more about the breakdown of where it was going. I suspect your distribution system is now under a management contract for 10 years, which could be making a profit for a contractor. You may also be paying your management companies fees to manage this service contract! Money for something you don't necessarily need :-(

Depending on the complexity of the system they have installed it may have been cheaper to just get the capital works done, and then just get someone in if it went wrong.

Also they may have installed a complex Satellite MATV system for people who want Sky which you land up paying for even if you only wanted basic Freeview Digital TV signal.

DreamerV

hannahO wrote: »

Oh I see. So you are saying that they've factored in higher purchase rate huh!? That's nice. If I am forced to pay, I would have paid £145 up front rather than paying over 10 years so that I don't end up paying 3.5 times more. :mad:

What I don't understand is that other HA are paying less than a half amount added to their rent per year.

This is so aggrevating, especially I do a lot to reduce my cost of living by not going out or go to see a movie, buy clothes, pay my credit card on time so I don't have to pay any extra etc
Someone else can just take away all of my good work. I guess £52 is nothing to those that make decision who can probably afford holiday 3 times a year. They don't know the impact on poorer tenants. :mad:

I probably didn't explain very well. £1 now, and £1 in 10 years is very different - £1 in 10 years in unlikely to be worth much at all due to inflation. Just like £1 10 years ago would have been worth much more than it is now. Just think of the price of a can of cola - I used to pay less than 30p and now it's around 70p. It's the same coins I use to pay but they buy much less.

If you pay £145 now, it could be roughly equivalent to you paying £520 over 10 years because of inflation. It also fits in with the poster who paid £158 - yours is effectively a bit cheaper because they are doing it on mass, even though it's a few years on now and you could expect slightly higher cost.

Don't get me wrong, I'd still be miffed. But it sounds like not far off the cost for a one property cost. My issue would be that I don't want it, don't need it, and I'd have expected they would have got a bigger discount when so many properties are being done. I do wonder if they would have got a bigger discount if they were paying over a lesser term (like when you pay for goods weekly rather than upfront, you pay more over the term because they charge interest). I wonder if you can offer slightly less than the £145 over 6 months and be done with it (say £120 - £20 a month for 6 months but then it's done). Not sure if they will be amenable, nor whether that would be affordable for you.

matthewcol

£520 per flat is ridiculous. I am in the business and charge around £70/99 per flat for a sky+ (2 feed) Commercial Installation. We install in many different places such as social housing, schools, apartments, high rise blocks. If there are extenuating circumstances such as a lot of extra work involved then it would be a bit more but nowhere near that much.
We find that some councils give these contracts to 'friends' who charge well over 3x much and do a very poor job.

hannahO_2

Thanks everyone for your input. It has been helpful because I know what I need to ask when I go to CAB to ask about my rights etc.

Hi matthewcol,
Since you are an expert, you will know what this means...
The faceplate they were installing included:
freeview, freesat, FM/DAB radio, standard Sky box, Sky+/SkyHD box and Hotbird Satellite
All they've done is erected a scaffolding, took the old analogue antenna that was shared by all flats and replaced it with new cabling and to install the faceplate in each flat.

There are 10,000 properties which means that there could be more flats etc.
Though I'm not certain exactly how many, if you calculate based on the 10,000 properties all forced to pay £52 pa that's a half million pounds income. A lot of money.

I'm going to use the figure you quoted and see how they'd justify their cost :mad:

Kurtis_Blue

You have a 9 wire IRS pretty much top of the line there is lots of equipment you are not aware off, over 10 years its cheap, enjoy.

Owain_Moneysaver

Kurtis_Blue wrote: »

You have a 9 wire IRS pretty much top of the line there is lots of equipment you are not aware off, over 10 years its cheap, enjoy.

According to DigitalUK, Enhanced IRS 9 wire - Enhanced IRS with dual feed to support Sky+ and Freesat+ and an additional satellite for foreign language services - From £245 per outlet

So there must be good reason why this project is coming in at over twice the suggested costs (which include new distribution cabling and faceplates), and five times the cost of a straightforward replacement communal aerial MATV system at From £130 per outlet

I agree with Colin_London that this is probably being done under a management contract by a contractor, probably at 'zero cost' to the housing association.

PARAS (which is run by, inter aliaBill Wright, a well-respected television aerial contractor and writer for the former Television magazine) says of communal aerials:

The argument that the conversion to digital is an ‘upgrade’ rather than ‘maintenance’ — and thus not covered by the management agreement or the rent item set aside for the TV system — might be fair enough if the system works perfectly for analogue but poorly for digital. But if the system has had no attention for many years, and the analogue reception is poor, the chances are that digital reception requires not an ‘upgrade’ but simply a reasonable level of maintenance. This has been lacking in the past, and now it must be done.

Kurtis_Blue

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

According to DigitalUK, Enhanced IRS 9 wire - Enhanced IRS with dual feed to support Sky+ and Freesat+ and an additional satellite for foreign language services - From £245 per outlet

States FROM and this property only has 5 tenants, all things being equal more tenants/units lowers the overall job cost and this also doesn't take into account the fact its being paid over 10 years as previously discussed

So there must be good reason why this project is coming in at over twice the suggested costs (which include new distribution cabling and faceplates), and five times the cost of a straightforward replacement communal aerial MATV system at From £130 per outlet

Yes its twice the cable, lots more labour and lots more parts!

I agree with Colin_London that this is probably being done under a management contract by a contractor, probably at 'zero cost' to the housing association.

The argument you state regarding upgrade doesn't hold for this case as it s clearly an upgrade to TV/FM/DAB and 2 sats

useless_git_requires_wife

Phone your local paper.

hannahO_2

Thank you Owain for digging that information. That's very helpful.

As I've just found out that tenants are paying an equal cost per week, the leasholders are paying more :eek: depending on the size of their flats. I was given all sorts of BS such as it's a reputable company, quality blah blah blah.

Imagine a cost difference that they will collect from a house with 5 tenants and house with 3 tenants and 2 leaseholders. I wonder how they justify that?

I'm definitely following this up :cool:

Notmyrealname

hannahO wrote: »

I was told that people who live in social housing in the UK are all charged this amount to cover the cost.

Don't like it, buy your own house/flat. Job sorted.