S20 works / excessive quotes

pinkshoes

How long did they give you to respond to the quotes? When DID you respond?

Could you get another quote to back up your argument that their quotes are excessive?

KiKi

I had this exact same situation, OP. I was charged £3200 for sorting the guttering at the back of my building - and my lease was only 20%!! They would not accept the many, many quotes I got for them at around 25% of the costs, although done within time. The other leaseholders rented their flats out and had their flats - surprise surprise - managed by the same management company that managed our freehold.

The guy doing the work also fixed a plumbing problem the previous year - in my flat - and charged £325, when I know full well all he did was put some of that sticky plumbing tape around a pipe. I challenged that, too, but was ignored.

As I was moving anyway, I paid it, and left.

I am absolutely certain that they had an arrangement with other managing companies that they would get quotes from an agreed set of maintenance companies, and their 'preferred' one always gave the lowest quote - despite the fact that the quotes were often significantly higher than any common sense would indicate. I learned afterwards that they were in dispute with a previous leaseholder who had refused to pay his charges after challenging them, and so much of the money in the 'fund' was going to pay for their solicitors' fees to take him to court.

I can't offer advice, but if you get the chance to do a Right To Manage (or buy the freehold) I would.

Rosemary7391

Why did they not ask the company who previously did the work to quote? Surely that's the obvious starting point?

prudence2

pinkshoes wrote: »

How long did they give you to respond to the quotes? When DID you respond?

Don't have the notices in front of me so forgive the imprecise wording, but we did *not* provide our own quote in response to the initial 'intention to carry out work' notice. At the end of that period, the MA sent us their two quotes together with a notice stating their intention to proceed with the cheaper quote and giving us 30 days to 'make observations'. We sourced our own quote within a few days of receiving the above; we're still within the observation period (just).

The MA (or at least the MA employee who we're exchanging emails with) is taking an utterly inflexible 'you didn't provide a quote within the given time' line with us, and won't address any of our points re their responsibility/duty (moral, if not legal) to seek realistic quotes.

The next step is a letter from all leaseholders to one of the directors of the MA.

prudence2

Rosemary7391 wrote: »

Why did they not ask the company who previously did the work to quote? Surely that's the obvious starting point?

You'd think so, especially as we were fulsome in our praise for the contractor. Sadly there's not a history of 'joined up thinking' from our MA!

Norman_Castle

This might help. http://www.lease-advice.org/

££sc££

If you have missed your opportunity to nominate a contractor, this doesn't change your ability to challenge the reasonableness of the service charge. Have a look at the 2007 service charge regulations. You could apply to a FTT for a determination, probably via a paper application/determination. I'd call LEASE a call for advise on this. Or even if you don't want to go through all that, you could advise the managing agent you're going to.....might get them to double think before pressing ahead