Reports on Solitaire
By admin | October 1st, 2008 | Category: Past Articles | 17 commentsWe’ve been receiving reports from Solitaire customers who have complained about them via this website and the petition and amazing work has started to be done!
Now this may just simply be coincidence after this website was setup to name and shame them that something has been done.
So I ask this – WHY has it taken public criticism to get this to happen?
However, some sites may be getting things done – others are still awaiting a response – namely the Beaufort Vale development in Bristol. Sheps’ copied an e-mail he sent to them on Monday which included the Paul Rayner, CEO of Solitaire Property Management, numerous accounts staff, the Bristol Office employees – Rob Banks and Anthea Moors, Lee Middleburgh of Peverel AND Adrian Wait of David Wilson Homes South West to me, and he still hasn’t had a reply!
Somethings never change
I think what you all need to bear in mind is that Solitaire is one part of a much bigger jigsaw namely Consensus Business Group and Vincent Tchenguiz. This is a large multi-national that has bought up lots of managing agents i.e. Peverel, County Estates, Chesterton….
The idea is to create a synergy across services and corner significant parts of the market. Scratch the surface of most big agents or players and Consensus will probably have some interest. Clearly big isn’t always beautiful!
I would suggest that the best way for leaseholders/customers in which to make clear their dissatisfaction is to vote with their feet. Leaseholders have a whole range of statutory law with which to use namely Right to Manage or Right to Enfranchisement, alternatively if there is a management lease in place which leaseholders hold shares in, simply sack the agent. All of these options can all be explored and discussed freely using the http://www.lease-advice.org website.
Well what a surprise – guess what! Solitaire are acting on my e-mail from Monday.
As we speak a workman has turned up brushed up all the rubbish from the bin-stores and sterilised them!
It’s amazing that when you say – I’ll pay only when I’m satisfied that the work has been carried out that it’s carried out!
Wonder if this is just a one off or will actually be on a regular monthly basis!
Good to hear the website is delivering positive results for some. However, we haven’t seen a Solitaire cleaner / gardener for at least six months! We’ve been doing it ourselves… but they still attempted to charge us for ‘gardening and maintenance’ in the latest bill. Apparently there are ‘credits’ within the accounts to reflect the fact they have done nothing / we have been doing it.
Yet we still haven’t had sight of the accounts, and the bills continue to rise while they sit on their hands. (We even had a letter this week saying there was a ‘deficit’ in the accounts… what exactly have they been spending the money on?)
We’ve had enough – this week we’re appointing a solicitor to begin Right To Manage proceedings.
I’m certain that the accounts will magically appear from nowhere as soon we involve solicitors, along with a slew of ‘balancing charges.’
I don’t know what’s more frustrating – the abysmal service and bad attitude, or the relentless, numbing struggle to get a straight answer out of them.
Hi
I’ve only just found this site. It is a not a suprise to me that many others are having problems with Solitaire. Their admin setup is appalling.
They are constantly sending letters to the wrong address (or not sending anything at all) then sending rude letters asking why I haven’t responded. They have come up with fees for sub letting that I was unaware of and one particular area of property maintenance has not been resolved for over two years now. This is something David Wilson Homes did not resolve correctly before the hand over and is still not sorted.
David Wilson Homes were terrible to deal with on the newly built flats. Once they had the commitment from you there was a catalogue of problems with the two flats I purchased, I just gave up on some of the problems and sorted them myself, it was easier.
It would not surprise me if David Wilson Homes were linked to Solitaire in some way as they are both incompetent. I wish I could sell the properties and get out now, mainly due to the issues with Solitaire, and I would certainly never buy or recommend anyone but a home from David Wilson Homes. The design and build quality is bad, the interior finishing is shoddy, the after sales is terrible and in the case of the flats the management afterwards is a nightmare. I am stuck at the moment though for at least another year. My next step is to refuse payment for the latest bills until the property repairs have been done. It takes them months to respond though. I will let you know how things go.
Hello all.
I have found another website where we can post our comments:
MANAGING AGENT REVIEW.COM
Beware Solitaire!
I live in an apartment block built by Kingsoak and formerly managed by Solitaire. They were so poor (and expensive) that as a residents association, we clubbed together and bought the freehold to our block (it cost me about £3500 including solicitor fees).
In the past 3 years, our maintenance costs have come down to half of what they were with Solitaire.
We were part of a group of 3 blocks. Whenever Solitaire came to do any maintenance they charged a call out fee for each block.
My advice is if you can get rid of Solitaire, do it – you will save a lot of money and have a lot less hassle in your life!
Anyone fancy wroking for Solitaire?
http://www.gumtree.com/london/72/29577772.html
Hello all.
I have been looking at the petition and it seems that Solitaire ‘manage’ properties everywhere from Edinburgh to Bristol to London, and particularly London and the greater London area. I would like to try and make more Solitaire residents aware of this website, particularly those living in the greater London area.
To that end I have emailed the London Evening Standard (LES) making them aware of this website. I have also asked them to publish an article on what we are trying to achieve. Solitaire are based in London and negative publicity via the LES is the last thing they need.
May I suggest that everyone sends a short email to the LES through the LES website giving your views on Solitaire, irrespective of whether you are a London resident or not.
Hey
Haven’t read all the reports on this site but am not surprised at all to see some of the comments.
Solitaire took me to court in 2006 because after a year of complaint (they were charging me for work they had not done and their land rent was increasing by 25% every year (well above the average rate of inflation), I chose to withhold 6 months payment from them. I inadvertently won because all I had to do was pay them the money I owed them, but they received a huge telling off from the judge who literally laughed in their faces for asking me to pay all legal fees including £60 for photocopying! Was very funny to see them squirm.
Forgot to mention that the MD of Solitaire is also an acting partner within said legal firm. Hmmmmmm. Invested interests?
To the Author of this site – you have done a marvelous job in identifying the failures of this Company – I feel what is now required is the collation of evidence to produce to an enquiry – any chance that this can be done as identifying the problems over the net will not carry any weight. I look forward to a suggestion please. Regards Syd.
Hi mascher
David wilson homes have no connection to solitare, the barratt group on the whole (DWH now owned by barratt)use which ever management companies the region developing the site decide on. I am a former employer of dwh, When i use to set up the management with our solicitors i always tended to use a management company i knew would do a good job, these were always smaller companies! more so that the blocks still looked good after we had handed them over whilst we were still building. Always refused nearly all of the ones mentioned on here from previous experiances!
Dear All,
Have read this site with great interest.
Currently have a legal case with Peveral who has the same Managing Director as mentioned in the Solitaire messages above. They are suing an elderly sick man and have spent over a year harrassing him via solicitors, whilst sitting on their hands doing nothing – thereby having to request repeated adjournments – only to now disinstruct those solicitors at the last minute.
Any information or comments from any of you would be most welcome at this present stage as the poor man I am trying to assist has gone through hell with them.
Many thanks in advance for any assistance or information that can be provided. Also, if any of you would like to \join up\ as part of the case with your own complaints against them, or would be willing to attend as witnesses to your own problems with said company,(which would help you in bringing your own individual cases against them if you chose to as you would be party to the information and hearing on this one), then please let me know.
Many thanks again and I look forward to hearing from any/all of you, particularly in connection with Peveral.
Dear Phoenix,
We may be in a position to assit you.
Please feel free to contact me directly. Link at the top of page with all contact details on the website.
Kind regards,
James Butler Esq – Director
Having a little knowledge of this website for months now I have recently received an internal e-mail accusing us of helping “Phoenix” I have come to understand the full extent of how people feel about PPM.
I am appalled and embarassed to work for them.
Over the last few years the ‘boys club’ who run this company have dragged us down. Profit and charges come 1st and long gone are the family orientated OM days when we cared.
We’re supposedly the leading PM company but how can that be if you lose all your devlopments as has been happening lately.
I am sorry even if my management isn’t, if it is any consolation we on the ground have to go through a restructure for their mistakes!
Dear Phoenix,
Was wondering if you had any update on your / the elderly gentleman’s situation with Peverel, their solicitors or the Courts? You mentioned that they had now “disinstruct[ed] those solicitors” but are they still chasing for payment? And are they still trying to get to you / him to pay their solicitors fees? I do hope that for his sake some progress has been made!?
Your comment about going “through hell” with Peverel will (unfortunately!) not be surprising to anyone who has any dealing with them (or Solitaire as in my case) and are reading this website. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner but I am just catching up with previous posts now. I just wanted to give you an example of a situation that happened to me:
I’d withheld Service Charge from Solitaire as they (for a change!) actually owed me money on insurance work that had been carried out on my Flat that I had settled directly with the Contractor and was originally told by Solitaire that they would reimburse me (which luckily I had in writing in an email, from the days when they sometimes bothered to respond to you!)
Well most people reading this will pretty much know how the rest of this story goes, Solitaire didn’t pay up, I then after a lot of chasing and getting nowhere withheld my service charge until they paid me, they instructed Solicitors, we received Court Claim Papers, etc. It was not until I wrote to Lee Middleburgh (Group Managing Director) and Andrew Billson (Managing Director of Operations) directly that I managed to make any progress in the slightest! [Note to Admin: I have included full names in this post b'cos as Directors of Solitaire their names are freely available from Companies House and in the public domain.] Dealing with the Solitaire’s ‘dedicated Customer Services’ was plain useless as were any (if they even bothered to reply!?) responses from my Property Manager if I ever managed to get thru.
Even AFTER receiving a letter from Mr. Billson directly confirming that they would be settling up with me I then subsequently received further notification from their solicitors that they were s-t-i-l-l going ahead with the Claim in Court!? It wasn’t until I actually forwarded Mr. Billson’s letter to me to their Solicitors (off my own back!), who then contacted Solitaire directly, who then eventually instructed them to stop! In a way I wish it had gone to Court as it would have highlighted the complete incompetence of Solitaire and its Management in dealing with the most simplest of problems let alone the more complex situations that can arise when dealing with property management.
Needless to say this all took well over a year to resolve and sort out which is not including the time to do the repair work on my Flat in the first place (and that’s a whole other story!)! And it all (including the repair work) needed pushing from me at EVERY stage to make even the slightest progress – again this will come as no surprise to anyone dealing with Solitaire / Peverel / CBG! The time and stress of having to deal with Solitaire is even worse than paying their extortionate fees and charges (which has been well established from the sentiments from most of the contributors on this site for their ‘managed’ properties!)
And I hope that “dalston square” is reading this as his/her post was extremely revealing about Peverel! It shows that the ‘business model’ that’s being used by CBG: buy up property portfolios to secure loans and bond issues on for further acquisitions, just isn’t sustainable as the incentive for the company is to ‘extract’ as MUCH money as possible from the property portfolios (read into this your Service Charges, Insurance premiums, and possibly bogus charges too, etc.) to be able to get and secure as much funding as possible to buy more properties and cycle again!
The main interest for any PMC with this kind of business model is NOT to maintain, manage or reduce costs for the acquired properties but to be able to show to ‘investors’ the HUGE cash streams they generate to be able to secure loans on them! The BIGGER the cash stream the BIGGER the loan or bond available so why would CBG want or even incentivise Solitaire / Peverel to reduce costs to leaseholders!? It’s not their aim. The mention of an old ‘boys club’ by “dalston square” has not gone unnoticed by readers of this web site and I hope that Vincent Tchenguiz is one of them and reading this!
As “dalston square” says Solitaire / Peverel are “supposedly the leading PM company but how can that be if you lose all your developments as has been happening lately” and I am happy to say that with the upsurge in RTM activity of late I hope that their days are well and truly numbered!
By the sounds of it “dalston square” is suffering working for PPM as much as we are having to deal with them and his/her apology is a telling tale for Peverel! “Dalston” I hope it works out for you too as well as for Phoenix and the elderly gentleman – luckily I still have the energy to deal with Solitaire but would not want to be in a position, later on in life of having to deal with such a nightmare of a company! Following lots of my own investigations there are PMC’s out there that do care about the leaseholder, you just have to find them, give them your business to let them thrive and hopefully see an end to the likes of Solitaire / Peverel.
“dalston square” If by any chance you can reveal further details of the ‘internal email’ then maybe that would give us all a better idea of the type of Company (and it’s management!) that we are dealing with, hope you will be posting again soon?!
PS Phoenix – if you are still looking for support in any hearing then please contact Admin for my direct contact details. Have you been in touch with James Butler at Landmark Lease? If not I would urge you to at least have a brief chat with him. I have spoken to James at length and he’s fully aware of what we’re up against and is more than willing to help! GOOD LUCK!
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