Car Lift Outage - (both lifts) Nov 18th

When both car lifts were in service at the same on Monday 16th Nov just two days ago, I said to myself that I must write a sarcastic message on the blog saying: "Hurrah! Both lifts working at the same time?"

With a busy schedule Monday and yesterday I intended to write about it later on today. Good to see that the outages being managed (or not) by Messers Thompson Moulton (part of Sutton Kersch), and Otis are still displaying complete ignorance to the effects on residents and a high level of professional incompetence.

Both lifts working lasted little over 48 hours!

This morning at 7am I was lucky/unlucky enough (yet again) to be directly involved. Upon entering Car Lift 2 (right-hand when viewed at street level) the lift proceeded to go up instead of down, and stopped on the 5th floor despite using the fob, and actually perssing the ground button as driving into the lift. After my venture up instead of down, the lift, upon heading in the right direction then proceeded to stop at every floor on the way down to the 1st, where it duly stopped.

After pressing the button for ground from within the lift, the doors would promptly close and I assumed I would be at last on my way. No such luck. The doors then opened whilst still on the 1st floor and after repeating several times with no additional response I reversed out to see if there was someone calling the list to the first floor, which could of affected the lift?

Upon reversing out on to the 1st floor (not my car floor) I saw that there was no other people waiting and assumed (correctly) that a fault was to blame. However, I thought I would give it one more chance and drove back in to the lift and tried for the ground level once more.

I would love to say that I left and made my merry way to an appointment in respect of my business, BUT that would be as accurate and truthful as the Thompson and Moulton / Building Managements claims that the problems are being sorted. In otherwords complete and utter bullsh*t.

Sensing the only option of freeing my trapped car was to reverse out onto the first floor and try Car Lift 1 (left-hand from street level). However, as Level 1 is not my car level, the fob to call the lift is obviously redundant and as such I attempted to see Concierge but at 725am I was not hopefull and upon going down to the office saw that it was empty. (anyone else see the promise of 24 hour Concierge upon moving in?)

Upon returning to the car, someone else was leaving and he kindly called the lift for me, so that I could leave. However, another car got trapped on the first level repeating my experience and to make matters worse, every car leaving via lift 1 would stop at all the floors on the way down thereby making it 4 times longer to use the lift!

The other person waiting also responded that he is moving out as a direct result of the issues with the car lifts.

Finally when the lift came I was lucky to get out BUT by being an hour late and missing a vital travelling hour from 7am to 8am in less motorway traffic I was now late, and the problem was compounding. The net result is that today, I personally have lost another half day which has to be rearranged causing loss of earnings.

.....Alexandra Tower and Letting / Estate Agents

Just a little spotlight on the legal aspects of either living in Alexandra Tower, or thinking about living in the building if you are either buying or renting.

If you are buying you are in luck, there are laws and regulations protecting you from misleading statements or omissions from estates agents, such as the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991, and the Estate Agents Act 1979.

However, despite such regulation, one of the most common gripes handled by the Ombudsman for Estate Agents is still "inaccurate sales particulars". In recent years however, it is now also a criminal offence for an estate agent to make certain statements about a property which are false or misleading.

Letting Agents like City Residential who handle the majority of Alexandra Tower sales&lettings, are not bound as tightly in their obligations to tenants, yet they and other letting agents could be falling foul of the law in respect of very recent legislation, namely the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

The new Act now prohibits 'agents' (letting or otherwise) omitting material information from consumers, if that omission might cause the consumer to take a
different decision. (see section 6 of the Act)

Material information is defined as 'information which the average consumer needs, according to the context, to take an informed transactional decision'.

As such, it would now seem that agents have to disclose the existence of any 'adverse information' on a property, without having to be asked, if that information would affect the consumer's decision.

It could certainly be argued that the car lift issues are 'material' in that if you were duly informed that on numerous occaisons, both lifts at Alexandra Tower fail, thereby denying you use of your vehicle, with related loss of earnings or employment issues as a direct result, that you would likely think twice before completing the transaction?

The old 'if they don't ask don't tell' excuse no longer applies so I would be keen to know if the estate/letting agents with any Alexandra Tower apartments on their books (e.g. City Residential) are in fact disclosing the issues to their clients (namely private landlords) or prospective tenants when they have an obligation to do so.

Sticking to the letter of the law, the car park issue could conceivably be withheld from tenants looking for an apartment to rent in Alexandra Tower without parking, as it could be argued that no material information exists in their case, seeing as they wouldnt be using the car lift.

However, aside from a building report, an argument exists that estate agents cannot omit the car lift issues, or other 'ongoing and persistent' issues from prospective buyers as such information would likely affect the overall 'resale' and rental value and could be argued to be 'material' even if it was not disclosed in a formal managment report.

Car Lift Outage - 27/10/2009

Like clockwork and on time to maintain its weekly outage status, the left hand lift (from street level perspective) is currently down!

Its only been 6 days since the last outage and during those six days both lifts have not exactly been fault free. If you are on any carpark floor other than the 1st you will know how frustating the problem is and how time consuming it is to wait and then use the lifts (or should I say 'lift').

The problem is that if you are on say the 4th level and you call up the lif and its not broken, when you get into it the lift then makes a stop at level 3, level 2, and level 1 on the way down to ground. If you are one of those people waiting to get out at level 3, level 2, and level 1 seeing this, you will (like the person in the lift) be somewhat put out at the wasted time.

Also, has anybody noticed that if the lift is in use, you cannot (like any other lift in the world) maintain your position in a queue. I know we Brits love to queue but its the fact that you have to repeatedly sit there pushing the call button on the fob every other minute or so until the lift has finished and you can call it? Why no queuing system?