Trouble

The title of my blog scared ya didn't it?

It's not all that bad.

We just most likely will be moving out of our flat soon. Why? Problems with the Property Manager. No...conflict with the Property Manager.

Here's the issue in a nutshell.
Last week we received our electric bill and it was over $1000. There was clearly a problem. I called the electric company discovered that the meter reading was almost ten times higher than previous months. When it was discovered that the electric problem was an internal one I called my property manager. He immediately sent an electrician. So far so good. The electrician discovered that the problem was with the water heater. It had been leaking heated water onto the roof for the past month. Thus causing a supper high electric bill. My property manager was called and he sent a plumber immediately to fix the leak. The plumber came and the leak was fixed. Still good.

Now here's where the conflict came. Once the leak was fixed the electric company informed me that the money would still have to be paid. They advised me to talk to my property manager about covering the excess amount of money that was caused by the broken water heater. I called the property manager and asked him about covering the excess charge since it was caused by broken equipment. He refused, saying he didn't have to pay since the problem was fixed immediately. After getting off of the phone with him I was angry. This bill was almost ten times more than we would normally have had to pay! I needed advice and knew there was a Hamilton department of building and housing that could let me know the law on this issue. So I called them. They informed me that the property owner would have to pay the excess amount because the leak impacted the amount of our bill. If we knew of the problem and didn't alert the owner immediately then we would have had to pay. I called my property manager today and told him what the Dept. of housing informed me. He still refused to pay wanting legal proof that the owner should cover the excess charge of our bill.

Let me just pause here and comment that any decent property manager would have covered the excess fee without question because they knew it was caused by their faulty equipment. When I spoke with the electric company and the dept. of housing, as well as my Mom, they all agreed that this is what a good property manager would do.

Now I have to file a complaint with the dept. of building and housing and probably meet with a mediator to get the money that the owner owes us. Ugg! I didn't want to do this, but my property manager has left me no choice. Thankfully I have a smart Mom who told me to get a record of the daily energy usage in this Flat for the past year from the electric company, and I'm doing a seven day meter reading (suggested by the electric company) to get an average of what our energy usage most-likely was for this past bill. The dept. of building and housing told me that these documents will help greatly. Actually they were confident that we will receive our money.

In the mean time, I have to set up a payment plan with the electric company to pay the bill for now until my property manager gives us the money owed us. Also, Cara and I need to move to a new flat with a new owner. We've decided that our property manager isn't very good. From the moment we've moved here his true colors have been slowly revealed. First with the shockingly dirty state of the flat when we moved in. Then with his reluctant and sometimes degrading attitude when we asked for repairs of different items (the water heater wasn't the only thing needing to be repaired in our Flat). And finally his response to this issue. If he reacts this way to a pretty obvious problem, there's no telling what other conflicts we may have with him. Can you believe he actually told me I was "bullying" him when I mentioned that I spoke with the department of housing?!

So we begin the search for a flat again. With a much better property manager. At least we're actually in New Zealand and can view the flat before we decide to rent it. We have to give 21 days notice before we move out so it'll probably be a month or two before we leave. Pray for us and this conflict.

Oh, and we're still in need of jobs.