Advice on dealing with a Management Company
Maintenance

Phil MK
Phil MK
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2 Posts
3 years ago
0

I own and let a leasehold flat in a block of 8 managed by a management company. The tenant has reported a failed TV signal. TV signals are provided to the properties from central TV aerial and satellite dish and presented into each flat through a connection socket on the wall in each of 3 rooms. Maintenance of this shared equipment is the responsibility of the management company. I am failing to get the management company to acknowledge and rectify this fault and would like some advice on how to make them do so.

I raised this issue with them but they refused to investigate as they had no other reports of failure. So I engaged a TV engineer privately, who tested all the 3 TV and satellite points in the flat and reported that all were failed or degraded. I presented these findings to the management company but they refused again to investigate, arguing that they still had no other reports of failure and as it didn't definitively prove the fault was with communal equipment ("demised") it remained my responsibility. (I've confirmed by studying the lease wording that this is true - basically the cabling and everything up to the distributor box is my problem.) They suggested cable trace and port test back to the distributor.

I then contacted them and spoke to their supposed expert on such matters who argued that such faults always prove to be demised and that a competent TV engineer would have fixed it. He conceded that he could send an engineer if I would commit in writing to paying what would be substantial costs if the fault was found to be demised.

At this stage, I spent some time locating and reviewing the equipment myself - I found a distributor unit in the cupboard which has 16 outbound feeds so appears to present the signal to each panel in each flat meaning presumably it would require 3 separate cables or wall panels to have faults for this to be an isolated issue, which is unrealistic. I spoke again to the TV engineer who could do no more but felt sure the fault was with the distributor despite the response from the management company. I contacted a second TV engineer but he was also unwilling to do cable-trace or port tests to the communal distributor but also seemed to find it doubtful this was an isolated fault.

With this, I replied to the management company, acknowledging I would meet any cost attributable to me under the lease, providing the cause of the fault was evidenced with a report and photo, and instructing them to proceed and send an engineer. Since then they have ignored all correspondence, except for sending one evasive email reply of 6 words only declaring "please can you provide this report". They have ignored requests to clarify and assertions that the report from the TV engineer is inline in the email chain they replied to should that be what they seek.

Incidentally, I have second-hand accounts from the tenant that one other resident says he has the same TV issue and the rest say they only watch internet-broadcast TV so don't use the TV/satellite points.

I just need some guidance on how to make the management company take ownership and rectify the fault. The tenant is increasing angry at having no TV service. Any advice appreciated.

Regards,
Phil

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