Anyone?

Hopefully someone can help me understand my rights here - it is not strictly a landlord-tennant issue because I own the flat I live in, however the property is leasehold and the council is the landlord (or whatever the correct term is for this situation!). They have recently carried out some maintenance work on the communal areas and outside area of the property (it contains 4 flats). They provided the 4 owners with a breakdown of costs, totalling about £550. The vast majority of the cost (£500) was listed as being for internal and external decoration. I did not sign any agreement or anything else, but they said if there was a problem with their proposal to contact them before the work started. In principle this sounded fine to me, so I didnt say anything. When they came to do the work, all they actually did was paint our garden fence (listed as a separate expense from external decoration) and paint my front door. As you can imagine paying £500 for having my front door painted does not appeal! I have emailed the council a few times with my concerns and got nowhere. I absolutely do not intend to pay them the amount they have billed me. Of course I will happily pay for the work they have done, but to give you an idea, they charged each resident about £20 for painting the fence, and it took the painter about 2 days. Painting the front door took him 1 day so I do not see why it should cost £480 more than the fence! They also have not done various other jobs, eg ivy removal that we will be billed for, and I have seen no external decoration at all. What can I do about this? I do not have £500 to chuck away on nothing and I dont intend to pay that much for the small amount of work thats been done. Any advice gratefully received!

It's just that some of us are doing it because of a genuine sense of injustice and desire to help others in the same situation, and some of us are just interest in making money from it. Let's face it, your business relies on the existence of bank charges, yet you expect me to believe that you are fighting the good fight? Pull the other one amd drop the righteous nonsense until you're willing to fight the banks for free.

Hi beetlejuice. Over the weekend I will try to catch up and answer any questions that have gone unanswered so far.

Not sure if Lucid has sent them, but if not I will sort it when I get home.

As you say that is just plain incorrect - however should the sum of your charges exceed the negative balance of your account, then the spreadsheet will (correctly) apportion 100% of the interest paid as due to charges. That is correct. the way interest is calculated is different for each bank, so the interest incurred due to charges figure is an informed estimate. It should be pretty close bu its just not possible to get that figure 100% correct on a generic sheet. That formula uses some custom functions i wrote for the sheet. The later version of the sheet doesnt have this as I removed for Open Office compatibility. The actual formula is pretty complex. I will break it all down for you over the weekend but as I only have 20 mins till I finish work for the week I dont have time to do it now. If you want to have a look in the mean time, you will need to refer to the hidden column N on the Charges & Interest tab which is where the meat lies: =IF(-'Charges & Interest'!H20*('Charges & Interest'!I20+VLOOKUP('Charges & Interest'!G20,'Charges & Interest'!$B$20:$E$771,4,TRUE)-'Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)/('Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)>'Charges & Interest'!H20,'Charges & Interest'!H20,-'Charges & Interest'!H20*('Charges & Interest'!I20+VLOOKUP('Charges & Interest'!G20,'Charges & Interest'!$B$20:$E$771,4,TRUE)-'Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)/('Charges & Interest'!I20+'Charges & Interest'!J20)) This is the part that actually estimates how much interest was paid due to charges. To be perfectly honest I would not bother replying just yet. Get your head round how it works first (i will try to explain it well). Even then in your reply I would reiterate that your calculations, although meticulous, are those of a layperson, and should they wish to provide more accurate figures you will be happy to review them. I'll update over the weekend with more info

Funny, I remember pointing this out to you (as did plenty of others) a few months back. Still i suppose it took a qualified legal professional for the message to have any effect. Oh the irony.

No the end result will be less people's money finding it's way to unqualified cowboys instead of actual legal professionals. Anyone who doesn't want to claim themselves can easily employ a solicitor rather than some chancer who doesn't know what he's doing (as so aptly demonstrated by yourself in the first post of this thread ).

Somebody shake that Judge's hand.

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No you are quite right thanks, somehow I managed to undo copying that formula down before I saved New version is below: Download CC v1.1

Right, the sheet is below: Download v1.0 BE WARNED! I have not tested this as much as I would like. The interest paid on interest section is not as accurate as I would like due to the varying ways credit cards work. I will be working on this, but for now its not 100%. It should be as accurate as the existing sheets, but I dont claim it's as accurate as it could or should be. If you are not claiming interest owed on interest, then there should be no problem. The contractual interest on the charges themselves should be as accurate as the bank charges sheet. Feel free to use this sheet, but do so at your own risk! If you do find any problems with it please let me know.

Hi Tracie, It depends on what their conditions of settlement were. Why don't you post up the conditions they made sot hat we can see what you have signed. They may not have made that condition - you never know. Lucid EDIT: Sorry I've just seen that I've posted as Mindzai but it is Lucid

Excellent! Well done elsinore! and congrats on the granddaughter too

It is ready, however I'm not happy about making it available yet. It works out the sums as accurately as the existing sheets, but I'm not sure that this is really accurate enough. However making it more accurate is easier said than done because there are so many different rules for the various cards concerning things such as balance transfers, interest rates on purchases vs cash etc.