Burns Avenue Residents Distress
By admin | November 18th, 2009 | Category: Past Articles | 9 commentsIt’s apparent that when TheTruthAboutSolitaire highlights individual residents cases, Solitaire Property Management / Peverel Property Management appear to attempt to address their problems.
This is of course, unless the residents have caught Solitaire / Peverel out and they do not have an answer to their problems!
Today’s report focuses on the residents of Burns Avenue, RM6 4DN – who are distressed by the ever increasing charges, caused by Solitaire’s / Peverel’s inability to make a decision that would be cost effective.
Solitaire will be fully aware of who the resident is that has contacted us, as we were copied into the correspondence that was sent to them. (we have not been provided with copies of the images to enable us to publish them on TheTruthAboutSolitaire, but have requested them from the contributor)
Dear Admin
I cannot keep quiet any longer and would like to share my experiences of Solitaire with the viewers of your website.
In June of this year, i received an invoice for oustanding works for the year of 2008. The invoice was for £172. £142 of this was for gardening. From the date i received the invoice, i have been in constant dispute with Solitaire over this.
Five months after first initial contact, quite a few e-mails (all of which were ignored), i finally wrote to the Head of Solitiare Property Management Company on 30th October to ask the questions i needed answering in order for me to understand why i was being charged so much more money on top of the already ridicilous prices we have to pay. Finally on the 13th November (7 days after date of letter was typed), i received a letter from Evie French, Regional Manager, explaining to me, that the extra money was for removing debris and planting. For an extra £16,000, i wanted to know what all my money had been paying for in the 9 years that i had lived here for if the debris was that bad and what plants were i paying for.
I wrote back on 17th November explaining that i was still not happy with her explanation and didn’t believe her explanation but RELUCTANTLY i enclosed the cheque for £172 because i was sick to death of the whole situation like so many other Solitaire residents.
Today 19th November, I receive another letter from solitaire accounts department telling me the are adding £50 + VAT to my account because i still hadn’t paid the bill! So basifcally i’m not allowed to query a problem, however big or small, be completely ignored for 5 months and then 6 days after I receive their letter, they are telling me they are charging me more money!!!! They think that because they reply, i should be grateful with thier response. I DON’T THINK SO!! I immediately sent an e-mail to my Property Manager and the Customer Services e-mail address and yes you guessed it, i’m still waiting for a reply.
Please see the planting outside my block, do you love the plants as much as me??
I’m sure the real “Chuckle Brothers” would probably do a better job!
To me, to you, to me! That’s just how it works with Solitaire, you complain, they respond (eventually!) with out any clear definitive answers / actions (just a lot of waffle!), then you have to get the energy together to try and respond again (…and the cycle continues!) What a complete and utter waste of time for everyone! If Solitaire did the right thing in the first place then none of this would be needed!
I too have complained about the gardening works, the estate does look great, but is it really necessary to be planting rose bushes around the estate. The majority of residents are hard working people who work all day, leave and come home in the dark, so don’t get to appreciate them. It’s an unnecessary cost if you ask me. I have had enough of Solitaire and hoping to leave the estate very soon.
As Andy from Solitaire explained, there is no justification for how they spend £50 on sending a reminder letter. The £50 charge is a punishment to make you pay up.
This is, of course, against the law.
The photographs from the residents of Burns Avenue indicate that they are looking in the wrong place for flora and fauna. If Burns Ave is anything like the development where I live, they should not be looking down at the ground, they should be looking up – at the guttering.
From the Solitaire/Peverel development where I live I have photographs of many varieties of exotic blooms being displayed in the guttering (or roof flower boxes as we call them). These range from Bladderwort to Hogweed to Siberian Triffid.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are NOTHING compared to our roof flower boxes in the summer.
Hi admin,
I think it’s important to let everyone know that the Regional Property Manager mentioned wrote again yesterday to the customer whose queries you have published – after receiving her letter in early November.
There were one or two points from the Regional Property Manager’s letter that I thought I would share in order to reassure everyone that each decision made by our Property Managers are made in the best interests of our customers.
1. The change in gardening contractor was a decision made purely on economical grounds – to reduce service charges to residents. The Regional Property Manager also confirmed that gardening costs are allocated equally across the development, and each individual property pays the same proportion in accordance with the terms of the lease.
2. The gardener who was awarded the contract does live on-site at this development, but as the contract is for an annual cost, the fact that they attend daily or weekly does not affect the annual contract amount. The total annual cost of gardening for this customer is £93.75, which equates to £7.81 per month. The Regional Property Manager also added that the development (which is in Chadwell Heath) is inspected on a regular basis to ensure that standards of work are closely monitored.
3. The pictures featured on the website are now somewhat out of date as these areas between the grass and the property have now been edged and pebbles supplied.
4. We would also like to confirm that no administration charge would be made to the customer’s account.
Anonymous –
I want to apologise for the delay in getting back to you regarding the issues at your development. I want to reassure you that your situation has been specifically discussed by the Managing Director with the operations team. I will get back to you with a summary of the action that is being taken very shortly. Please bear with me.
Thanks,
Andy
Solitaire Online Feedback Manager
Dear Andy
very sorry to tell you – BUT MY PICTURES WERE INFACT TAKEN 2 DAYS BERFORE I SENT THE LETTER TO SOLITAIRE IN NOVEMBER – THERE IS NO PEBBLES FROM THE GRASS TO THE BUILDING – GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT – this is a complete lie, NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE IN 11 YEARS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and as for the gardener attending weekly or monthly and it doesn’t affect the price – WE DON’T WANT TO BE SEEING HIM EVERY SINGLE DAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Its not necessary for him to be cutting the grass twice a week in November! The gardens are not equally shared, they are split between each block and how many flats are in a block! Because there is only 8 flats in my block, we get charged a lot more! Surely there is a huge difference from £54 to £172 – DO YOU NOT THINK???
and for FYI – as a good will guesture by solitaire, they have NOW not added £50 to my charges after I wrote and complained – that’s because it took you 5 months to reply to my questions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Andy,
That has got to be the quickest response from solitaire EVER…now I know this, when I have my next issue, I’ll post it on this website, because it seems Solitaire will only respond once the resident is beyond angry! If you responded to individuals querys when they are first raised, and actually spoke to residents as opposed to sending letters and emails (which I have to say generally contain waffle, excuses and nothing related to the query itself), perhaps us residents wouldn’t resort to such hostile tactics to get our issues resolved.
[...] We’ve been contacted by a resident at Burns Avenue, to follow up our first posting ‘Burns Avenue Residents Distress‘ – following Andy’s claim, that the photo’s originally posted were out of [...]
Is that Andy THE Andy Bilson who knows all about the *** **** and **** practice and who works out of the head office at Luton?????
I never did receive a reply to my very detailed letter about the ********** and ***** practice on the development I worked on.How rude.
Did public concern, you know, the people who take action after someone has blown the whistle on ***** practice??call you?