COUNTY ESTATE MANAGEMENT 2

As per post of 10/12/06 , letter to Mr. Paul Rayden.


Dear Mr Rayden

I note you have not replied to my letter dated 11/11/06.
I informed you therein as Managing Director of County Estate Management of my intention to start this blog - here is the second post- and suggested you could use this as an opp0rtunity to enhance the reputation of your company with readers of the blog including the professional bodies such as ARMA, ARLA and IRPM of whom your company and individual members including yourself are members; that such enhancement would be simplicity itself, requiring you just to manage this property according to the professional standards espoused by yourself on your impressive website -http://www.countyestate.com. In order to facilitate this I offered/invited you to take action to wipe the slate clean regarding the various problems that have accrued in the management of the property in the last few months in the areas of major works/general management/communication and are still outstanding. I listed these and asked you to properly investigate them in the hope that you would acknowledge where your company has been in the wrong (whilst of course defending yourself should you think I have been unfair or alleged any untruths in any way) and to assure me that you would take steps to ensure that similar problems would not arise in the future- this would then mean that the blog could start afresh with no outstanding issues to deal with in regard to your company.
I am sorry that you have so far chosen not to take me up on my offer, or even acknowledged my letter, but true to my blogname I am writing to you yet again to ask you to reply to my request and deal with these issues.
I would ask you to consider it a mark of sincerity that I am not going to go into details of these problems in this post- except for the question of how CEM deals with complaints- as I could very easily so do as I would suggest this would not be in the interests of your company .To repeat, all I want is to be able to start afresh in my dealings with your company and all it will take to do this is to sort these problems out. But I won't be fobbed off!

Interestingly I have come across a precedent for this blog in the form of the one belonging to the Westside One Residents' Association who live in a block in Birmingham managed by County Estate Management ; in its case, a member of your staff, Louise Jensen, doesn't just comment but posts directly to the blog.
I would suggest that you could designate a member of staff in your office to comment to this blog and i would even consider allowing direct posting, It is obviously in your interests to be closely associated in such a manner with the blog because in this way you can ensure a fair representation . I will come back to this at the end of the post.
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COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE You will recall that in June I became unhappy with Mr Freilich's management of the major works and as I could not resolve this with him I tried on 2 occasions to contact his linemanager Mr Chris Burbridge to resolve the matter. Mr Burbridge did not return either of my phonecalls so I wrote instead to his linemanager Mr Tony Gayer, who is head of all residential property management in your company, detailing my concerns re Mr Freilich's handling of the major works and Mr Burbride' failure to reply to my attempts to communicate with him; Mr Gayer did not reply so I sent him a reminder but again got no response. Accordingly in August I wrote my first letter to you as Mr Gayer's linemanager and as well as asking you to look into the original complaint re Mr Freilich I asked you to explain the nonresponses of the 2 linemanagers. You did not reply. Hence I wrote to you my most recent letter in which I also raised and listed concerns about both the general management of the property by Mr Freilich and issues regarding general communication. Again you have not replied or investigate my complaints.
I would like therefore to understand how six communications with three linemanagers including yourself has as yet produced not one reply nor any investigation by any of you into my complaints- and why in particular has yourself as the person ultimately responsible for all matters to do with CEM not responded?
Can you please describe the explicit/ implicit complaints policy under which your company operates ?
Lastly,I would refer to a letter received from Mr Freilich since my latest letter to you. In it he refers to my letter 'having been received in my office ' and goes on to ask me what my concerns are regarding the major works. Now I have to guess at what is going on here, but it would seem that somehow he has got hold of a copy of my letter to you and perhaps been asked to sort the matter out at least as regard the major works, (he makes no mention of the general management or communication issues.)?
If so l just to make the matter clear- the basic issue is Mr Freilich's management of these areas- it is mindboggling to suggest that he should investigate the complaint of which he is the subject.
If Mr Freilich had sorted these problems out months ago there would have been no need to make a complaint about him in the first place, and if his linemanagers had responded there would have been no need to contact you- unfortunately this has now happened and the matter has become your responsibility to deal with by default. You would not , I suggest, find a Customer Services Department in the country who would think that such a complaint should be referred back to the member of staff complained about to deal with himself.
I would also add that even though I am willing to treat these matters under the category of 'teething problems' that does not mean I think they are trivial. It raises the question of how any of your staff could be subject to disciplinary process if complaints about any of them are refereed back to them to deal with.
If you do not wish to deal with my complaints regarding Mr Freilich yourself then by all means delegate to an appropiate member of staff to look into- appropriate meaning someone not implicated in the complaints . I do however want your response to my questions on your complaints procedure and my suggestion that someone be delegated to interact with the blog.

I have replied to Mr Freilich's letter, requesting a copy of the surveyors report and asking for consultation with lessees on the way forward in implementing the works , on the basis that when he is asking what my concerns are he might at least partly be meaning concerns for the future - it is unclear from his letter .

Lastly, and as the end of the service charge year is close, I would like consideration be given , when working out the service charge account, to an appropriate reduction in management fees up to the year end to reflect the degree of problems described.

So , for the seventh time and counting,,,,,



I remain

Most sincerely

NOTFOBBEDOFF