What would you do?

Orkocean

Afternoon all, I have a situation at this facility I just transferred to that my DM and me have been discussing trying to find the best course and I was curious what some other thoughts were on it as well. I'll try to be as brief as possible as I do get long winded *or should I say long typed* at times  

Our company acquired this property April of last year and we have a tenant who had 2 units with the previous ownership of this property. It seems she always dropped a check in the drop box for an amount to cover both of the units. Both units were enrolled in insurance since no response to the 30 day notice letter and one of the units had a rent increase as well in the past which made her payment short. One of the units has already been sold in auction before I got here due to non payment and I see some notes in the account monthly showing where she drops a check in the drop box after hours for the same amount. The previous manager was just applying the checks and letting amounts carry over which we're not supposed to do since it's a partial payment. Now I have one of her checks in my hands, my question to the DM was do we waive the additional $274 she owes in back payments to get her current and let the monthly check continue to pay her forward as currently she'd be paying $20 extra each month and wont be due for a rent increase again for some time as she just had one hit this month. Or do we not accept the payment and let the account sit for 6 months which is our policy for abandoned units before we can auction them. And so you're aware all contact info is invalid, letters bounce back, phone numbers are disconnected. I even used my personal beenverified account to look for additional contact info all of which has failed to reach her. I already know when/if she does show up we're gonna have fireworks due to her one unit being sold i'm sure but with no way to contact her there is not much we can do. 

karen700

Just spit-balling here...Maybe you can get in contact with bank (her money has to come from somewhere for her payment), Post office or maybe info on her old job to try contacting her....you could check with an officer on police force if there is old DL or license plate on her lease. I would check with tenants around her unit...sometimes friendships are struck up on property. Last ditch effort is to run ad in legal notice? If ya'll are TSSA members, I would check with their legal team and get some advice...Good luck!!

Orkocean

Oh the joys of taking over small time facilities. The leases were 1 page, no info sheets, no id's, and hers isn't even signed. Checked gate logs since we instituted a non manual gate here and never accessed. I guess it comes down to how far above and beyond should we go. And since they already sold 1 of her units i'm not looking forward to when we do get in touch with her. 

karen700

OMIGOSH!!!!!!  ....I may cry for you!

Adrienne_Danyel

Orkocean said:

Oh the joys of taking over small time facilities. The leases were 1 page, no info sheets, no id's, and hers isn't even signed. Checked gate logs since we instituted a non manual gate here and never accessed. I guess it comes down to how far above and beyond should we go. And since they already sold 1 of her units i'm not looking forward to when we do get in touch with her. 

Ouchie! I dislike lazy managers (meaning prior to you guys taking over). Do what your heart is telling you to do in this case. If you tried reaching out to her by mail 30 days prior to the insurance charge I would go ahead & not accept a payment. In Az it is solely their responsibility to provide updated information to us. We should never have to hunt down our customers. Esp. if you are running a big property. Is your lien law 6 months past due before you start the lien process? 

skinman

Our policy is if you are 20 days late or more... we don't accept checks. Maybe institute that in your lease moving forward. I personally wouldn't waive anything...but that's me. I'd run her in the paper for auction and see if she reaches out. 6 months is a long time as well... we work with folks, but once they are 45 days late they are in auction status.

i43storage

$274 is a lot of money to leave on the table.  If it were me, I'd move forward with the auction.

Orkocean

6 months is our policy for "abandoned" units, with hers not having a signed lease that is how we would have to deal with to finally sale hers per our company policy. 

skinman

I'm not sure why they kept paying towards 1 unit and sold the other, if I am understanding you correctly. We treat multiple unit tenants as one account and don't process payments towards individual units.

Orkocean

The fun of previous managers who didn't know what they were doing unfortunately. But we do treat units as individual units. 

skinman

What a nightmare... Hope you can get it sorted out.

OutboxChar

What you ~could~ do is call the bank and lie (but for a good cause) Hi, we found a book of checks (or credit card, what have you)  for your customer. If you would call her and stop by the office while we're open and we'll give it back to her. Then you have her there in PERSON to speak with. May or may not work but you could give it a shot.

OutboxChar

OutboxChar said:

What you ~could~ do is call the bank and lie (but for a good cause) Hi, we found a book of checks (or credit card, what have you)  for your customer. If you would call her and stop by the office while we're open and we'll give it back to her. Then you have her there in PERSON to speak with. May or may not work but you could give it a shot.

  (not that I condone lying, but man, you've tried everything else) You might just say "We received a check from your client and need her to call us ASAP."

MaryG

Have you tried social media?  If you have "Beenverified" account, maybe pm a relative from that information.  You can tell a lot about people from their social media.

Orkocean

yep, we tried sending her messages on facebook and no response. Next time we have double coverage at my site i'm going to drive to her address on file on the off chance it's right and the post office is just not delivering it right.

ESS

Orkocean said:

yep, we tried sending her messages on facebook and no response. Next time we have double coverage at my site i'm going to drive to her address on file on the off chance it's right and the post office is just not delivering it right.

Interested in how this turned out!

CVSSSTORAGE

@ESS ooh same

Orkocean

Forgot all about this lady, she finally reached out at one point and started raising hell and threatening lawyers about the other unit being auctioned already. Then never heard from her again, I drove to the address as it ended up being not far away and it was an abandoned house. The company never wanted to agree to auction the unit so when I left that company it was still sitting.

janiceD

geez... that's tough. I think we would not post the check if it is not the full amount and it would go to auction as we dont take partial payments. it is also her responsibility to keep her contact information updated and current. I think that not having a signed contract means that the customer does not have a storage unit with you. When we took over another facility that was missing signed contracts, we let the customer know what as long as they didnt have a signed contract, they did not have a storage unit with us! It was alot of work but now everyone is up to date and our delinquency rate stays under 2% for that facility. Hope you get it resolved!

CVSSSTORAGE

here if we take any type of partial payment we have to start the process all over again unless we have them sign a form that states if full payment is not made by the time the auction happens it will not stop the auction process

ESS

@CVSSSTORAGE eww, I would hate to be bound by that! We do accept partial payments but tenants are aware (by their signed lease and info pkt) that partial payments do not stop the auction process. 

Orkocean

Even by their lease I would still make them sign a partial payment agreement form re-iterating the fact @ESS. When we ran sites in TX even though the lease stated it our company lawyers insisted anytime a partial payment was made if we didn't have that form that we would have to start the process over. Can't tell you how many auctions i've pulled from sites for partial payments taken by managers not following rules