First Port - Charging for payment by DD

Exemplar

We recently sold/ part exchanged our house to Barratt's builders.

As part of this we had to generate a full list of payments to the maintenance contractors (First Port).

Idly going through the list we discovered that 4 times we were charged £15 per annum for paying by DD, 2008/09/10/11.

In addition they have charged us £40 for a 'missed' DD payment in May this year when we completed the house sale and moved in at the beginning of April.

Do I just 'let it go' or do I go for the jugular?

eddddy

Did you pay monthly by DD?  And does your lease say you have to pay every 6 months or 12 months?

If so, the £15 was probably an admin fee for accepting monthly payments - rather than a fee for paying by DD.  Didn't they tell you about the fee in advance?



Regarding the 'disputed' DD payment... you'd need to read the lease, the DD instalment agreement you probably signed, and your completion statement, to see if the management company are wrong.


It often works something like this, using dummy dates and dummy numbers as examples:

• The lease says the service charge is due on 1st January - let's say the amount is £1200

• The management company lets you pay the £1200 you owe in 12 monthly instalments of £100

• You might sell the flat in April - but you still have to pay the management company the balance of the full £1200 that you owe

So it may be that they wanted to collect one last DD in may, then get your solicitor to pay the rest of the £1200. TBH, you should have checked when they wanted you to stop paying the DDs.

So your solicitor would have paid off your service charge through to December, but claimed the May to December portion back from your buyer.


(You could say it's a bit like this - you buy a sofa in January and agree to pay for it in 12 monthly instalments. You might sell the sofa in April, but that doesn't mean you can stop paying the remaining monthly instalments.)

rachel230

Forget about "going for the jugular" over £100 with FP. Just be glad you got away from them (and it's only £100 you've "lost" to them!)
It will cost you much more financially and in terms of stress to fight for a refund - which you won't get anyway..

Tiglet2

Totally agree with Rachel over “going for the jugular”.  FirstPort are a big company (used to be called OM Peverel - read their reviews).  Somewhere in your paperwork they will list their fees and will not make exceptions no matter what you think. One of the worst management companies in my opinion. 

Jeffrey_Shaw

Since sending and receiving a DD costs neither side anything, why on earth would there be a charge of £15 to receive?

TripleH

Business accounts are charged for every DD they receive (although not £15)

eddddy

Jeffrey_Shaw said:

Since sending and receiving a DD costs neither side anything, why on earth would there be a charge of £15 to receive?

As I mentioned above, it may be an admin fee for accepting monthly payments.  Leases usually say that the service charge should be collected 6 monthly or 12 monthly.

So they might justify it by saying they have to check payments and update the leaseholder's account 12 times a year, instead of once or twice a year - which is extra work.

Plus they have to set up a revised DD payment schedule each year, notify the leaseholder of the payment schedule, etc