The advice I was given was that even if you believe you were right and being treated unfairly, to go to court you would have to pay your own legal fees. However I’m not entirely sure if they are recoverable or not. If not and you belive you are right and especially being treated unfairly and have all the evidence then perhaps representing yourself in court would be cheaper and easier as you know the history better than solicitors and solicitors can often forget or not communicate a small niggle which however demostrates the unfairness. So by represnting yourself you can tell the truth and more importanlty the whole truth.

We own 2 buy to let apartments in a building of 20 in Chester. We have a correspondence address for our buy to let properties including these 2 which are managed by RMG. The service charge is collect by standing order over 10 months from Jan 1 to Oct 1. The 2010 invoice and S.O. for one of the apartments was received and the S.O. was duly set up and the account is up to date. We did not receive the invoice and S.O for the other apartment so we wrote to RMG accounts department on 15/01/10. As we had not receive a reply by March, on 12/03/10 we wrote again and enclosed a cheque for the 1st three payments and again asked for the S.O. asap so we could set it up in time for the April 1 instalment.

On 13/03/10 we received a letter from our Lender informing us that a debt collector [pdc] had written to them on behalf of their client RMG to request payment of the annual charges in full plus their fee. They enclosed copy of the letter from pdc. We informed our Lender that we have already written to RMG and sent payment to bring the account up to date. On 26/03/10 we received another letter from our Lender plus copy of another letter to them from pdc, and debited our account with their fee of £100 for having to correspond with us. We tried unsuccessfully to contact RMG by telephone to find out why they had not replied to either of our letter nor cashed the cheque.

On 09/04/10, we paid a visit to RMG/CPM’s regional office in Northwich. Their regional manager, Paul Latham, was on holiday but their Operations Director, Justin Herbert, met us to discuss our complaint. He explained that they had been writing to us at the actual apartment address because that is the address appearing on the Land Registry Document, even though in previous years they had sent communications to our correspondence address. He was not able to explain why neither of our letters had been replied to or why the cheque had not been cashed yet but he promised to investigate and write to us. He asked for copies of both letters which we sent him by email attachment on 12/04/10.

We thought that was the end of the matter now that one of the RMG directors had personally got involved and had copies of the letters. But we were wrong in our logical expectations. He emailed us back on 16/04/10, attaching copy of the invoice which had been sent to the apartment. He explained that on 25/01/10 they had sent a reply to our letter of 15/01/10 not to our correspondence address from where it had come but again to the actual apartment which we did not receive nor did he sent copy which we will be requesting. He also said that they had not received our letter of 12/03/10 or the cheque [which we do not believe] but in any event, even if they had received it, he says, it would have been returned it to the apartment address, because the matter was already in the hands of their debt collector [pdc] and so they could not accept any payment and their collection charges still stand.

Immediately upon receipt of the invoice, and the corresponding payment reference number, by email, we made an online payment for the 1st four months, bringing the account up to date, and set up a S.O. for the remaining 6 months.

We have not replied to Mr Herbert’s email yet, that will be done on Monday, but we have a feeling that RMG are going to continue to demand full payment plus their collector’s fees which now has gone up to about £400.

We think RMG have caused this problem by refusing to communicate with us as our correspondence address and for failing to send their reply to our letter of 15/01/10 to the address where it originated from and is stated on the letterhead. RMG did not even have the professional courtesy to at least send a copy to our main address to give us the opportunity to act as necessary to avoid a simple matter becoming a problem. Surely the role of a management company is to collect payment and provide good service without creating a conflict both of which they have failed to do. Therefore, we do not think their collector’s charges are justified in this case as our account should never have been referred to them for collection in preference to responding to our letters at our correspondence address. Furthermore, we think they should refund us the £100 charged by our Lender with whom they have damaged our reputation unnecessarily.

We will take action against RMG, if they do not accept our payments and drop their charges and any advice or suggestion would be welcome.

Thank you – Phoenix Properties.