Firstly, we’d like to say a big thank you to all the ‘newbies’ that have e-mailed us in the last few days with their stories and were pleased to know that the TheTruthAboutSolitaire, is ‘helping’ you to deal with Solitaire Property Management / Peverel.

A very big thank you to ‘Jon Dyson’, who has been contributing some excellent information in regards to Right to Manage and the correct procedures / processes to follow when instigating RTM.  We take a lot of pride in seeing this type of community spirit to help others, taking place on TheTruthAboutSolitaire.  So Jon, keep up the good work!

That’s the ‘Thank Yous’ out of the way, so back to business…..

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that we’d heard ’Peverel OM Ltd‘ were going to be changing their name to ‘OM Property Management‘ and as a number of you have commented, this is know public knowledge and is taking place as of the 3 February 2010.

The Peverel OM website currently advises the following:-

National property managers Peverel OM, who manage over 1,100 privately owned residential developments will be changing their trading name to OM Property Management and launching a new look corporate identity and customer website on

Wednesday 3rd February 2010.

The new customer website has been designed to meet the needs of all customers living in Peverel OM managed leasehold properties throughout England and Wales. It provides useful information on the OM Property Management team and the services they provide to leaseholders, house builders, developers, housing associations/RSL’s, Right-to-Manage (RTM) and Resident Management Companies (RMC).

Customers will be able to use the ‘What You Need to Know’ section of the website to obtain useful information on how OM Property Managers work to provide customers with a quality, value for money property management service for every development. Detailed explanations on topics such as Service Charge estimates, Reserve Funds and Ground Rents are provided together with many Frequently Asked Questions.

So, why the change?
Prior to the purchase by the Peverel Group in 1998, Peverel OM was known as OM Management Services. Recent customer research had also suggested that there was confusion amongst residents between Peverel OM and the Peverel Retirement Division so by creating a simple name change would help clarify this to customers.

OM Property Management is a trading name for Peverel OM Limited and the business remains a Peverel Group company.

Changing the company name will not affect the services that Peverel OM currently provides to customers.

If you are a resident living in a Peverel OM managed development please contact the customer service team at the Luton Head Office, who will be happy to assist with maintenance and account queries on your development

We’d also like to point out, that despite mentioning this, ’Andy’ wasn’t forthcoming in confirming this until today, when we received the following:-

Hi everyone,

Back in mid-December I promised to update you on any significant changes and I can now confirm that from the 3rd February 2010 Peverel OM will have a new trading identity known as OM Property Management – and a new customer website.

Customers living in Peverel OM managed properties will receive a letter explaining the changes from early next week, but we are happy to put everyone in the picture now, including our Solitaire customers.

So, why the change?

Prior to the purchase by the Peverel Group in 1998, Peverel OM was known as OM Management Services; that’s why we have chosen the OM Property Management name. Previous customer research had also suggested that there was confusion amongst residents living in Peverel OM and Peverel Retirement managed leasehold properties.

Creating a simple name change helps to clarify to customers who their managing agent is, and it prevents calls and emails being misdirected to the wrong Customer Services team. In fact, the decision to change the name was taken over a year ago, and we’ve been working hard to get everything ready for the official launch date of 3rd February.

The new OM customer website – http://www.ompropertymanagement.co.uk – is now live for everyone to view. It has useful information on the OM Property Management team and the services we provide to leasehold customers. In addition, the website also gives further information around house builders, housing associations, Right-to-Manage (RTM) and Resident Management Companies (RMC).

The ‘What You Need to Know’ section of the website explains how the OM Property Managers work and gives detailed explanations on topics such as Service Charge estimates and Reserve Funds. There’s also a helpful ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section that seeks to address many common enquiries.

I should point out that this change only affects customers living in Peverel OM managed properties; customers living in Solitaire developments should continue to contact the Solitaire Customer Services team as detailed on our website – http://www.solitairepm.co.uk.

As I said back in May last year, we are listening, and more importantly, we’re working to make things better. In the Solitaire Customer Services team we’ve made real progress in responding to customer enquiries via email, but please know that we are far from happy with our response times for telephone calls made to the team.

We are working to implement telephony updates that will allow calls to be handled more effectively by identifying whether it relates to a maintenance issue or accounts enquiry. We hope that this work will be completed next month, but would like to apologise to anyone who has called with a problem and not been able to get through at certain times of the day.

Since the Solitaire team moved to Luton our Solitaire Property Managers are visiting developments more frequently than in the past. We are making further operational changes to the team to ensure that they continue to focus on the issues affecting you, and are able to resolve any problems on your development with greater effectiveness and efficiency.

We receive customer feedback by email, letter, phone and of course via this site; I will continue to respond to constructive comments where I can.

Thanks,

Andy
Solitaire Online Feedback Manager

Based on what ‘Andy’ has told us, the reason for the Peverel OM name change is purely because residents were confused by Peverel OM and Peverel Retirement…… So, it has nothing to do with the recent negative publicity and damage to the reputation of the Peverel brand, that has been dragged into the press following the CARLEX campaign?

Co-incidently, following this announcement and update from Andy, a new visitor to TheTruthAboutSolitaire contacted us to tell their story, which was quite enlightening:-

I have another name to add to your list of Peverel names.  I live in Portishead on the huge Port Marine Development which has been managed by Peverel (appointed by Crest Nicholson) since conception sometime prior to 2003.  In July 2009 by letter we were introduced to the new name and identity of Consort Property Management a division within Peverel OM Limited, the residential property management arm of the Peverel Group.
 
The letter stated “Consort Property Management was created last year to provide a dedicated property management team with the experience and expertise to manage the large scale, more complex residential and commercial developments within the Pever OM Limited portfolio.  Your property is located on one of these developments.  We have been working as a team for some time now but felt the time is now right to inform our customers.”!!!
 
Needless to say, we are managed by the same inefficient and insatiable team – “a rose by any other name” – and are presently actively pursuing the route to self-management.

As it says above, despite name changes, despite the promises, the operational side and management side of Peverel (which ever guise that maybe) doesn’t change – they still still provide the high charges, lack of services and have a lack of respect for their clients – afterall, ‘Andy’ continues to contribute to TheTruthAboutSolitaire, but never answers direct questions e.g. A N Oymous and Nicky Vogg to name a few.

Some of your Correspondence

We mentioned at the beginning of this post that we’d been contacted by many ‘newbies’, asking for help and assistance, so we thought we’d publish a couple, for others to comment on, whilst we also hope it will encourage others to contact us.

The following is from a resident called ‘K’, who lives in a development called ‘Odyssey’:

Dear Truthaboutsolitaire
 
Peverel are awful, and each year they increase the service charge.
 
At one point they put things down that did not exist like water features and TV in gym.
 
Nobody has the time to challenge them and there are no residents association and full of landlords who do not care.
 
What can we do ?
 
So greatful for your leaflet in our letter boxes.

We were very surprised by the message received from MW in Essex:-

We have a rather strange problem in our block of flats – Solitaire has failed to bill us for the September 09 – March 2010 period, despite repeated requests for them to do so.
 
We now have a state of the art electronic on-line payment facility. However we can’t pay our bill because Solitaire won’t add the outstanding account to the on-line facility and haven’t sent out a request through the post.
 
Is this unusual, or are other leaseholders having the same problem?

What’s surprising for us is that Solitaire haven’t billed, despite the client asking them to bill them – yet aren’t responding!!!!  I wouldn’t be surprised if, once ‘Andy’ see’s this, he’ll be asking for MW to contact him so that his request can be addressed!

Goes to show that something isn’t quite right in the Solitaire / Peverel system.  If developments are going missing, what hope do we have.

‘F’ from Hampshire told us:

We here have again written to our MP Rt Hon James Arbuthnot and to Hampshire Tradings Standards.

Got a visit from a VD (the new property manager) in April 2009 seemed OK she took notes and we asked loads of questions and also asked for answers.

That was in 8 months ago. Two letters one recorded delivery letter and 10 emails later since
April and we have heard nothing!

Our letter to MP and Tradings Standards was detailed we have said it is daylight robbery and we will not tolerate being ignored.

They have both responded and we have given additional information.

It gets worse why oh why can’t people in power see that there is an extortion racket going on hiding under the so called law.

The fact this contributor actually met with their property manager and has still not heard anything, hardly supports what ‘Andy’ says above:-

Since the Solitaire team moved to Luton our Solitaire Property Managers are visiting developments more frequently than in the past. We are making further operational changes to the team to ensure that they continue to focus on the issues affecting you, and are able to resolve any problems on your development with greater effectiveness and efficiency.

Sometimes, we actually question what the point is of ‘Andy’ contributing to TheTruthAboutSolitaire, because much of the things he says are only to protect the brand / identity of Peverel and nothing more than that!  Come on ‘Andy’, why can’t Peverel tell us the truth for once and stop all this mumbo jumbo about ‘things are improving’…. because it’s obvious that they arent.

Downing Street Petition

The Downing Street Petition is gathering support quickly and at the time of writing this post, we were up to 757 signatures!

A massive thank you to those that have signed it and to those that are bringing the petition to the attention of others. 

More support is needed and we’d love to break the 1,000 barrier by the end of February – so please, please, if you haven’t done so already or know someone that should sign it, go to:-

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/flatownerhelp/

Thanks

Admin @ TTAS