Penalty Fees pursued by Debt Recovery Firm overdue with Report,

As some owners may already know, the administrators, Mileniun-Levante have appointed Corporate Credit Debt Recovery Ltd to pursue late payers of Condado de Alhama Community fees.

I noticed that Corporate Credit Debt Recovery Ltd is now over two weeks late submitting its Annual Return to Companies House in the UK: 

www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

I understand that many owners are being pursued by Corporate Credit Debt Recovery Ltd, and many more owners may be pursued by this company.

After Mileniun-Levante took over from RPM, they failed to communicate properly with some owners. Mileniun-Levante also failed, for some owners, to deduct fees which had been previously debited by RPM on a regular basis. Using Corporate Credit Debt Recovery Ltd, Mileniun-Levante are now seeking to add a 20% penalty to the fees owed. 

Given Mileniun-Levante’s failures, these penalties should not be charged.

These penalty fees will, I understand, be destined to enrich this debt recovery company, not to the benefit of the Community of CDA. Seems a strange way to run our own Community of owners.

Ian

Hi Ian,

We have been in discussions with ML for several months about alleged unpaid fees. They claim our bank (Cam) has refused to pay two requests for service charges made by them.

To cut a very long story short, I insisted Cam Bank carried out an investigation as to why the requests had been declined and it turned out ML admin had incorrectly copied our bank details onto "the new system" and were therefore asking for money out of someone else's account!

ML admin were absolutely convinced the mistake was not thier fault until we recently visited the office at CdA and showed evidence they had been taking money out of our correct account up until quite recently, so they HAD originally been given the correct details.

They took our details again, (directly from one of our bank statements) and mumbled a "sorry" to us.

Luckily, the situation had not reached the point where this Debt Recovery Firm had been engaged, but i think we were getting close to it.

WW

ML need to get up to speed and stop hassling good honest people and dont forget who pays their wages

and also the Presidents need to take a look at the situation .

But then again i heard the Presidents are the ones that are pushing for this behaviour.

all well and good but get your priorities right . how can they fine for thier incompetence.

hope no one  is on the make with this dept company.

Last summer, in the offices of ML, there was a very long list of apartment numbers, where the owners had not paid their community charges. If you take the long term view, then unpaid charges that are not recovered, will cause a shortfall in budget, that will have to be made up by the rest of the community.

With a community the size of CDA there will always been admin difficulties in some cases, and I agree it is unfair to penalise those parties who can demonstrate that they have genuinely tried to pay their comminity charges.

However, if these debt collectors succeed in recovering unpaid charges from those who have willingly not paid their fees, then I fully support them.

And how many  on this long list had payed or were trying to pay

they should get it right before they send in the bailiff

but then again do you blame the monkey or the organ grinder

.

thanks all for your postings, and to the owners following this thread.

My point is simple:- that there are many owners who have become inadvertly in arrears with fees as they were simply unaware of Milenium's failure to take direct debits.

For some previously paying by bank direct debit those details just got lost in the transfer from RPM. So what did Milenium-Levante do? - too little too late is the short answer. Milenium-Levante simply failed to communicate - I don't know of a single case where they even wrote a letter to an owner.  The post boxes in CDA are not hard to find.

On the list posted by Mileniun-Levante  guess what - it was not correct! If you were lucky enouigh to be in CDA, see the list and note your name was not on it, you thought you were aok. Well, no! You may well now be being pursued for arrears!

The arrears situation is accentuated by the fact that RPM used to charge 6 monthly in arrears. It was then decided apparently at the May 2010 AGM to charge fees 3 monthly in advance. Again, there was no communication by Millenium-Levante of that decison, so many people were, or maybe, still are unaware of that. 

Of course, I totally agree that serious intentional late-payers should be vigourously pursued.

For what I suspect is the vast majority it is time to right the wrong and scrap the penalty charge for those caught in this mess. It is our community, lets have rules that are fair and administered fairly.

Ian 

Hi all,

We've had no problem paying the community fees and M-L have had no problem taking them off us ! As a suggestion, why don;t they have an amnesty and inform everyone to get payments up to date by end June after which they'll include penalty charges. That seems fair, would provide an incentive for people to get it sorted and would then enable them to focus on chasing those really trying to avoid payment.

An Amnesty - excellent idea.

That would be great for the community bank balance and for the community of CDA.

Mr President,  Phil Tann, how about you propose it?

Ian  

Would be better for the community bank balance if all those that have not been paying their fees actually paid them!

I understand that there are some owners that haven't paid for over a year,  to my mind they surely knew that the payments had stopped being taken from their accounts, so why didn't they do anything about it?    If i remember collectly at the time ML took over it was well publishised that ther were problems with the details handed over from RPM,  posts were made on the forum, on other forums and the community website.   I received a email from the community presidents( that I believe was sent to all owners ) asking be to check that the fees were being taking and to contact ML if not.  

The list that you refer to, the one that was posted both on here and in ML's window,   was NOT a debtors list, it was a list of owners for which RPM had not passed on any email addrees,

The change from arrears to advance payments was approved at the AGM, by the owners, again this was well posted here, other forums and the community website.  And that can't really be used as an excuss, as if people haven't paid the fees that make no difference! 

The 20% fee is stated in the statutes, it also says the community could be charging interest, so perhaps the debtors are getting off lightly?

Looking at the reports the comminity was coming on a million in debt last year, so unless something was done about those not paying fees we would be bankrupt by now.  The decision to pursue debtors was approved at the AGM, so the administrators are quite rightly carrying out the wishes of the community.  

At the end of the day it's the owners responsibily to ensure that are paying the fees, and I have little sympathy with those that must of noticed the money wasn't being taken but then decided to ignore it until found out.  As Kev1 says "We've had no problem paying the community fees and M-L have had no problem taking them off us"   Perhaps an Amnesty could be suggested at the 2011 AGM?   But then, as those in debt do not have the right to vote at the AGM i doubt they would get a lot of support from the owners that have been paying their fees?

The agenda dated 3 May 2010 for the 27 May 2010 AGM made no mention of the proposal to switch to charging quarterly in advance for the community fees.

According to the CDA Statutes, for the AGM:

“Only the matters indicated on the agenda may be considered and resolved, where whatsoever agreement adopted on other matters, where applicable, shall not be valid.”

The proposed switch in charging is included in the minutes under Item 2 which is described on the agenda as:

“2. Accounts for 2009, budget for 2010 and debtors report”

There was clearly no mention of the proposed switch in the charging basis on the Agenda for the 27 May 2010 AGM. 

It would appear that this proposed switch to charging community fees 3 months in advance, (rather than 6 months in arrears) which aggravated “arrears” for many owners, may not be valid.

Ian

I can't find the specific thread that identified that the CC payments would be taken in advance and where that decision was documented but I know there was definately some documentation about it. The reason behind it was that CC payment in arrears was leading the community into debt, we were always behind in our payments for the various services the resort requires and I think having to pay charges for that.

Just to confirm - I was not suggesting non payers are let off their fees. My suggestion was that they are given a date by which to pay their fees up to date without additional penalty. After that they should incur charges. I was suggesting the carrot and stick rather than just the stick - it might mean more money gets paid sooner.

Kev1, absolutely agree, great idea. It is time to wipe the slate clean from the problems due to the admin handover and the AGM issue:

Let's have an amnesty so that no penalty fees are added to the communuity fees due, as long as the community fees due are paid by the amnesty deadline.

Of course, in light of my posting earlier today regarding the invalid nature of the switch to charging fees in advance, many of the so called "penalty fees" should not have been charged.

Ian

I doubt that any of the debts were caused by the switch over to paying in advance.

The debts are for people that haven't paid for a year or so, not just missing a payment?

How long haven't you been paying for?

Did you contact ML?  Did you supply your bank details when asked?  

or 

did you not bother contacting them for months, and then not supply your details?

If the latter, then it's your own fault.

i would suspect that the presidents are keeping away from this thread as they probably know more details and don't want to get drawn into personall discussions on an open forum.

We were contacted by ML regarding non-payment of fees, something we knew absolutely nothing about. Apparently the previous administration had forgotten to take the money out of our bank for the first three months! ML emailed us when this came to light, but they were extremely helpful, considering we have always paid up. This was for the first three months from our completing our purchase, and it's taken 2 years for this to come to light! They quite rightly blame the previous administrators in their email, and it doesn't look as if we're being penalised, at least I hope not as how on earth would we know when the community fees were going to start!

Have no intention of stirring up trouble as was just having a quick scan of the forum before packing pc etc up- but on this point can I just say that when you buy on a resort such as this you know there will be community fee's and an administration. I know too well that RPM were hopeless but as I paid the  Community Charge for our property I checked every month that it had gone out. Can I add that the forums were alive with information about the Community Charges and when they were going to be taken out and RPM emailed people to say they were starting collections. That did require them to have your email address but again the forums constantly had posts about that and I didnt have a problem with contact with them although my brother in law did but resolved it with one personal visit.

However a point that may balance this is that early on after my purchase I met a 'mature' couple when walking on the as yet unused golf course and they thought that Polaris staff ran everything including any security and gardening and refuse collection, they had no computer and weren't computer literate and had no idea what administrators would do or even who they were, good or bad. They were wainting for a letter that would give them some information about paying their £30 per month charges (as they had been advised it would be by their property agent) They had spoken to no-one (I think quite literally 'no-one'  on or regarding the resort) since getting their apartment a few months before and knew nothing of the cancellations of MIrador, Golf Suites and further Penthouses.

So, early on people could fall through the net but I think since early 2009 there's been masses of information out there and although people think they've been hassling the administrators in order to resolve problems I think its been too hit and miss and no regular and constant daily contact which is what is really needed in those sorts of circumstances.

Hasta la vista.

Why all this b*gg*ring about with 6 months in arrears/3 months in advance?

Why don't we just pay monthly like most places do?

Hi Peter, sounds like a very sensible suggestion to me.

I just noticed there is an agenda item relating to this for the EGM on March 26  - Item 4 "Economical Report" 

Ian