Excessive heating charges, faulty system leasehold flat

Gerry1

Whatever you do, don't go for electric boilers !  At 25p/kWh or whatever, and unlikely to decrease, no-one will be able to afford the running costs.

Out of the frying pan...

Malimadness

Gerry1 said:

Whatever you do, don't go for electric boilers !  At 25p/kWh or whatever, and unlikely to decrease, no-one will be able to afford the running costs.

Out of the frying pan...

Our January rate was just under 30p/kWh. Happy days!

gm0

Got deleted by auto-mods for profanity. So now edited to remove swears but retain meaning.

Serienmäßig-enttäuschende = Definitely disappointing.  Doesn't capture the rictus grin fake customer service part though.

There are laws on rebilling energy. And there is no expectation that standing charges or unit prices for commercial contract will be discounted or marked up. The capped domestic price per unit comparator is irrelevant though many people will lapse into this error for lack of knowledge, and so call up and waste everyone's time moaning about it. My brother gets 20p/kwh why is this like this. Because it's a commercial uncapped contract. And so it is. A contract with a fix gives you a period of known cost. e.g. 1 or a couple of years at a price. Which may prove good or bad value depending on wholesale markets over that period. A floating price can spike making rebilling costs a lot more variable. You win. Or lose. Again - a spike could be bad. Very bad but you win in the dips vs the fix. That is like the choice on domestic. Known. Or a bit cheaper with a risk of spikes and dips. The agent charging £1296 for 18 quarterly bills and then listening to a load of complaining and phone calls and emails. And following up unpaids and collections. Well they have a salaried, taxed employee somewhere sitting doing that. A few days a month each quarter. Around the other duties. The billing rate after office and other taxes isn't ridiculous. An alternative would be no admin fees on bills. And stick another 5k on the basic "to manage the estate" - core charge. Breaking it out into separate little bits helps in some ways and causes other frustrations as here. You pay it all in the end. It may be this charge is plump even allowing for collections efforts. Because the core contract fee is lowballed. And that is how the thing got negotiated by the developer when they hired this agent. At the moment the agent is paid by the freeholder to do legal basics and the required annual processes and to rebill those to you. This will have been set to a "low flame" contract as in most new developments. As the developer wants it cheap. The agent wants a pool of sites to manage and to make a turn on their office admin labour costs vs the agreed contracts and have enough to keep them all fully busy. Profit making business. BTW this won't go away with RTM. You can pick a small local one or a bigger corporate  (with finance people) for your agent. But if they do more. And better budgets, accounts, audits and meetings, more responsive - you pay more for more time and more expensive employees. Because - more time and more expensive employees doing a better job cost more and with margin on - the contract charge will be a lot higher. The range of costs for core contract could be 1.5 to >2x.

We pay towards 1k per unit for ours and some activity based extras. It is very site dependent. How many blocks. What services. Lifts. Communal energy as here. Gates. Parking fobs and admin. Age of site and admin. We are Share of Freehold so our poor one is ours - arguably cheap and underpowered and everybody hates it. Ignores me. Unresponsive. Doesn't do the things I want quickly enough. Answering the phone. But they also don't want the fee to go up. When we relet it soon it may well roughly double even if we have a better service for a while. So remember how little 15k actually buys. An average salary employee on 30k. Overheads, office and tax. Call it 2x for the sake of it here. So you buy 1/4 of one person over the year. A week a month. For everything that needs doing. Sticking to the contract and "seriallydisappointingviasmilingliesvaguepromisesneverfulfilled" to upset residents (a thick skin is integral to this job). No agent makes any profit at all if they run around doing extra every time someone yelps - outside the service levels and the contract.. The operating approach is generally to send the same smiley reptile for a year or two and when rage builds. Swap them out for a cleanskin - rotate them around the sites. After 5 years or so - a developer or RTM or SoF will likely re-let. So as the agent you are keen to get it added to your list and start well and then keen to sweat it for profit as time passes and you will be leaving soon. Managing agents. Ah the joy. The answer to new build developer cosy arrangements is RTM and appointing your own. Choose wisely.’

Malimadness

Thank you. Even more depressing. At least the profanity livened it up.

Malimadness

I have found out that £72 is for the servicing and maintenance of the boiler system carried out by a property maintenance company contracted by our managing agent. This maintenance company is the sister company to our energy billing agent. Hence this admin charge being added on to the heating bill. So this fee is on top of any service charges for the building. Over 15k a year to service and maintain a three year old system. I have contacted to the maintenance company and they have informed me that due to the contract being with the managing agent they cannot give me information regarding works/costs etc. 

TroubledTarts

You are within your rights to request a breakdown and proof of costs but I don't think there is a time limit as to when they have to provide this.

So another limp lettuce reply....sorry

FreeBear

gm0 said: There are laws on rebilling energy.

Yes, there are regulations covering rebilling of gas and electricity. But it is still a wild west when it comes to communal heating systems. OFGEM have been named as the regulator for heat networks, and are currently doing studies & consultations to flesh out policies & rules. Don't hold your breath for any immediate results or controls over pricing.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/heat-networks

HampshireH

I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that that admin fee should be clearly broken down in your service charge not the energy bill to the customers. Especially if it's a service and maintenance fee.

Depending on the value (which from what you have said is applicable )of that servicing contract it should have gone through the s.20 consultation process. 

Malimadness

HampshireH said:

I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that that admin fee should be clearly broken down in your service charge not the energy bill to the customers. Especially if it's a service and maintenance fee.

Depending on the value (which from what you have said is applicable )of that servicing contract it should have gone through the s.20 consultation process. 

Thanks for your reply. The managing agent took the decision to take the heating charge/maintenance costs out of the service charge when accepting the tender. I have no idea if this allowed? 

Malimadness

After some reading, according to the Landlord and Tenants Act, the leaseholders should have been informed of their right to nominate a contractor for a long term agreement. The managing agent nominated three and even though residents were consulted, they were misled regarding this admin fee. As the owner of the property, I was not consulted regarding the contractor appointed.