Will Peverel / Consensus Group Issue Us With A Comment?
By admin | November 19th, 2009 | Category: Past Articles | 3 commentsYou would think that following today’s BBC Breakfast broadcast that has attracted many visitors to TheTruthAboutSolitaire today and over 2000 on the CARLEX website, that ‘Andy’ (Peverel’s Online Feedback Manager) would be posting to tell us their side of the story.
Especially when we know that they have been monitoring TheTruthAboutSolitaire website constantly today.
The roll that ‘Andy’ holds within Peverel is clearly just to protect the brand (a bit like Laura Jones) and not one for making official comments. Therefore, why does Ian Rapley of Peverel / Consensus Business Group or Fairhold Homes (as he has informed people on the Age Concern Forum) not pass comment on today’s events?
Andy, we’d like you to get Ian Rapley or someone with authority to provide us with an official comment and one that wasn’t given to the BBC or Channel 4 of late.
To highlight some of the Peverel Retirement experiences, we were contacted today by a contributor, who had watched this morning’s BBC Breakfast broadcast and this was their story….
Hello, I am writing about the excessive charges for my deceased mother’s apartment in Garstang Preston, managed by Peverel.
My mother moved into the flat in September 2006, lived there for 1 year, suffered a stroke and never was able to move back into the flat. She died on 02/04/2007.
Since then I have had to pay five lots of ground rent (£197.50 every six months) and five lots of management fees totalling £4486.22. Grand total is £5473.72!
The flat is empty and has been for sale since she died. She bought it for £195,000, now for sale at £125,450.00.
Her liquid savings are running out and now the two executors will have to pay these ridiculous fees out of their own pockets. I have written to a Mrs (NAME CHANGED AS REQUESTED BY PEVEREL EMPLOYEE) at Peverel management services asking her that, should the flat not sell before mother’s savings run out,the charges could be taken off the selling price of the flat.
The answer from was that charges could not be defered.I was offered Premium credit services. The charges are 3.65%!!
I fully support the campaign exposing Peverel’s disgraceful charges and will do anything I can to make them see reason.
This is an all too familar story that we are hearing about the Peverel Retirement Home side of the Consensus Business Group, but it also has the foundations of how leaseholders are treated.
To make matters worse, due to the negative publicity of Peverel – this probably contributes to why the property value has decreased so much and are unable to sell it. Afterall, with the experience that many of us have now had, would we buy a property that was associated with Consensus Business Group companies? – Certainly not.
Tomorrow, we’ll also be publishing our whistleblowers experiences of what it was like to work for Peverel and believe us, you’ll understand why we get so many problems and are overcharged!
If you have a story that you would like us to highlight, please e-mail us and include your customer reference number, so that Peverel are aware of the property / account in question.
I suspect the answer from Peverel (if one is received at all) in relation to the charges being levied against the empty up-for-sale flat referenced above will be that the charges are what they are (with no justification provided), and that it makes no difference whether the flat is occupied or empty & on the market.
I sympathise with the author’s situation – made harder by the fact that it is as a result of a bereavement – but I suspect Peverel really don’t care about that. All they care about is getting their fees paid soon-as. They’ll argue that the flat exists whether it’s lived in or not (which, whilst NOT defending Peverel, is sadly a fact), and therefore the ground rent & service charges are still payable.
Whatever the financial situation with the deceased’s estate, I won’t even consider taking up Peverel’s “Premium credit services”. That just means you’ll end up paying them even more money, and get nothing extra for it.
The fact that the property has now been on the market for over 2 years doesn’t help, but sadly that’s the way the property market is at the moment (if the market hadn’t dived, I would no longer be living in a Solitaire-managed property…..). If the flat isn’t selling, I would suggest you reduce the asking price to £124,950, therefore below the stamp-duty threshold – that reduction of just £500 might be the catalyst to finding a buyer, also meaning you are then free from having to pay any more fees to Peverel, whilst getting naff-all from them in return. And of course the continued (and increasing) bad publicity Peverel are receiving is also not helping…..
As far as making them “see reason”, I wouldn’t waste your time. Not going to happen. Your best bet is to sell the flat as soon as possible, which may well mean a further hit on the asking price, but as noted above, if you drop just below the £125k stamp-duty threshold, that might have the desired effect – have this not already been pointed out to you by your estate agent or solicitor…???
As an ex-employee of Peverel’s (13.5years up to August 2007) I have rather a lot of knowledge regarding the activities of this company. I would be happy to offer any help I can in exposing this company and how it has [phrase removed] residents over the years. Feel free to contact me. Please understand, there are a lot of excellent and hard working staff who work for this company, who are afraid to speak out against Peverel for fear of losing their job.
[ADMIN EDIT]
Having been contacted by Peverel in regards to a comment above that was deeemed as possibly being defamatory towards Peverel, we have subsequently editted the post.
Please feel free to comment but please ensure that TheTruthAboutSolitaire are not exposed to any unforseen liability.
Dear n Carter,
Any insight into the internal workings of Peverel would help us all to understand what’s going in our own respective situations (at the hands of which ever CBG company we are unfortunate enough to be dealing with!) Any reasonably large company will have it’s fair share of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ employees but if it’s driven by Management / Company Ethics to take advantage, overcharge, abuse trust, etc. then any ‘good’ employees would face as much hardship as the customers (i.e. victims!) of the Company! This is a very public forum and any insight and revelation would be good to hear! To be honest I’m not surprised that “employees have been threatened” with “losing their job” – I sincerely hope that you have managed to escape from such a poor Company!