Afhrico Total Shambles

We moved into Northgate View just over 18 months ago. At that point, the management company was Etchell & Young. As part of the lease we were told that our defect list would be attended to and because the ceilings are so high a maintenance team was on call to wash windows, change light bulbs, etc. There was a restaurant on site (closed a week after we moved in), a gym for R50 per month which was monopolized by personal trainers who required far more than R50 a month, and a swimming pool. The gym and pool disappeared during the lockdown. The defects list has never been done, A water leak in the roof came in through the passage light and pretty much exploded and we have not been able to have the lightbulb in the bathroom changed. It is beyond the reach of a normal ladder and in a very awkward corner. Defects continue to get worse - rising damp, cracks, etc. During lockdown, we all battled and had to try to negotiate agreements that would assist us to get through We went so far as to include bank statements and salary slips so that tEtchell & Young and our landlord could see that we had a genuine problem. Three months ago the body corporate changed management companies. The first we knew was when a statement got pushed under our door. The first problem was at the beginning of November when we bought R320 prepaid electricity from Protea metering that was never loaded. We got through the month buying on the app but at the end of November they had still not loaded the credit and they had blocked our meter so that we could not buy any more - Etchell and Young had not provided them with any of the paper work. Despite it being ******* they blocked our power via a third party and we sat for one night with no power. This was then sorted out. We are still waiting to be credited with the R320 and had to purchase another amount to ensure power for the month. The R320 appears to have disappeared. On the 28th my husband paid the rent and water for December. The money has gone across to them but today we received an SMS accusing us of not paying the rent. If necessary I will reverse the debit and force them to come and apologize and collect the payment. You can never reach them, get put on hold for 20 minutes at a time. Ricardo, Walden, and Kosi are never available. We asked for a new lease, a new payment agreement, and for the defect list to be taken care of. This is the final straw. People are moving out in droves. There are currently 18 vacant apartments in the complex with more being vacated every weekend. They tried to put in a control system at the gate which made it necessary for residents to use their own data in order to get into the complex. No discussion - just implement. Coming in the middle of COVID this is tiresome and anxiety-provoking. Why pay early if they are going to tell you that you have failed to pay? The whole electricity issue was totally ******* but they did it with no qualms. Prepaid is designed to be directly between the tenant and the supplier, The fact that the management company is able to hijack payments concerns me immensely. The email received from Ricardo informs me that we will continue to receive the ÿou have not paid the rent" emails and offered a payment option of R3300 a month for 6 months. There is no way - do these people live in the real world? Did they get forced to take a third of their salary during lockdown? I have not even been to China and yet I am being penalized for something I had no control over. It also really worries me that Afhrico can access funds paid to other people without even bothering to talk to the tenant.We have seen no proof that the management company has changed. We could be paying into a bogus account. The fact that your telephone system is a bit archaic adds to the suspicion. Then of course there is the small matter of never being able to get people on their direct lines - another disturbing fact. Ricardo claims he was in a meeting? As the Credit Manager, he should either be able to put a message on his phone explaining where he is and inviting people to leave messages, or divert his phone to the next senior person in the department or even to the switchboard. It really troubles me that we are paying large sums of money to people we have never met, have no contract with and who are able to remove funds from accounts that they have no claim on at all, Sounds a bit fly by night. If these little messages about not paying the current month's rent continue I will be forced to lay charges of defamation as I can clearly prove that the charge is bogus and the accusation defamatory. I am sure that tenants would be far more co-operative if you actually tried talking to them prior to sending out baseless accusations and plundering accounts. We have no lease agreement with you so technically this whole thing just a case of corporate bullying.