Service charge payment difficulties?

Service charge payment difficulties?

14:21 PM, 2nd September 2020, About 4 years ago 1

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Has anyone had problems paying into what appears to be a ‘protected monies account’? Xenia Estate Services (formerly Fortis) have complained that they are not receiving the monthly service charge on my flat by the due date. Since April it’s been going into (I think) an HSBC Client Deposit Account and (presumably) Xenia transfer it to their bank account and then post it onto my account. Assuming the second stage is a manual process I wonder if this has been affected by Covid-19 (although Xenia deny this). Furthermore, the last 2 payments were returned: one was paid two days before and the other a month before. It’s all rather strange.

The account is not registered with the verification service which surprised my own bank, First Direct (part of HSBC), which could not explain why. Xenia have said that that account has no name, which seems odd to me.

No, I haven’t fallen for a scam, I am 100% certain this is all correct, but it’s frustrating to be told rather sniffly by a credit controller that I’m not paying my service charge on time and that I’m the only person having this problem.

Alan


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Comments

Graham Bowcock

10:24 AM, 3rd September 2020, About 4 years ago

Alan
Is the HSBC account one of Xenia's. If you are paying into an account that they have nominated, then it would seem to be their problem to resolve. Maybe check that it is going to where they want it to go. I'd have thought that any internal transfers between accounts after you have paid is their problem - not yours. It sounds like they may use a general collection account and then allocate funds to discrete clients' accounts.

The accounts they use should be mande and not only that should include the words "clients accounts". This stops the bank offsetting any money that the company itself owes against money held on behalf of clients. There are regulations on this activity.

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