Hello all,

I was wondering if you could offer some advice.

Myself and my girlfriend live together in our flat, which she owns. The property is managed (building maintenance) by a company called CPM; we have to pay a yearly maintenance charge of £1300 for services this company provides, i.e. window cleaning, hoovering the stairs, looking after communal areas etc…

We have always been up to date with all payments, bills etc… earlier this year (March / April) when we received a notice that this years charge was due to be paid, my girlfriend paid for 3 months and then setup a standing order to pay the remaining value on a monthly basis. We received a letter over the weekend from a debt collection agency stating that they had received a formal request to recover the sum of £703 plus £140 charges for their services. The letter also stated that CPM had made numerous requests for payment and also sent numerous reminders. We had received no reminders, no formal request and no contact from CPM regarding this at all.

My girlfriend has phoned the CPM management company today and paid the outstanding £703 for the maintenance, we have done this to avoid any further problems form CPM. However we don’t believe that we should pay the additional £140 to the debt company for their “services” since we had no notice that anything was outstanding.

She also advised CPM that we had received no reminders and no notice the standing order had not gone through and asked why CPM had not sent out any reminders or tried to contact her, she also asked why it had been passed over to a debt company, to which they replied “it had just been referred”. They also advised that we would need to write a formal letter to the debt collection agency, explaining why we would not be paying them £140, then the agency can contact the management company.

On this letter it also mentioned that they would contact our mortgage lender to inform them that we had missed a payment for this maintenance charge. What does this have to do with our mortgage? We have never missed a mortgage payment.

Do we have to pay this £140 charge? What if we refuse to pay the £140 charge? Can they take us to court?

Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Graham

Why did your girlfriend never notice that the automatic deductions were NOT being deducted?

I would ask for copies of any correspondence from CPM. And If they can't produce it then THEY should send the letter to the debt collection agency explaining that they (CPM) had assigned the case without full justification. CPM should pay any required agency fees.

But, this will probably never happen, and your girlfriend's credit will reflect this negative fact.

The reason the mortgage company should be notified is that there is a possibility of a lien placed on the unit. But that's down the line. I would send a letter to the debt agency, with a copy of the receipt for the payment, informing them that your account is up to date and to cease all collection efforts. Then see what happens from there.