Who's liable for debt collectors fees?

dillons

Registered User
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119
Hi,

We were late paying our management fees a couple of years ago when things were very tight. The fee was given to a debt collection agency by the management company and the annual charge was paid by us. Our bill has arrived for this year & there are 2 additional charges on it relating to the debt collection agency. I have queried these with the management company as to whether we should be liable to pay these fees. They insist that it is covered in the contract signed at purchase. They say it is covered in this clause

'To Pay and discharge all rates, taxes, duties, charges, assessments, impositions and outgoings whatsoever whether parliamentary, parochial, local or other description which are now or may at any time hereafter be charged, taxed, assessed, levied or impose upon or payable in respect of the demised premises or on the owner or occupier in respect therof except all Lessor's taxes and to indemnify and keep indemnified the Lessor against or arising out of same or any expense (legal or otherwise) in connection therewith.'

In this context Lessor is defined as the Management Company and we are Lessee and this is a point in the 'Lessee's Covenants' section of the contract.

Now I'm not a solicitor but I read the above point as relating to paying any rates & taxes charged to the lessee (us) on the property either now or in the future, basically Property tax, local rates etc. I do not see how this covers a bill from a debt collection agency that was issued to the management company, we never received this bill and to the best of my knowledge there is no invoice in our name.

I know someone who previously fought this kind of charge with a mobile phone company & legally they were not entitled to pass the charge on to the consumer & had to remove it from their bill.
It's not really worth the solicitors fee but I still haven't seen where we signed to be responsible for this charge.

Anyone with any experience of this or with a better understanding of what the above paragraph relates to??

Thanks!
 
Not a solicitor either, but the piece you quoted includes charges along with taxes and rates, so you can't rely on that narrow an interpretation and ignore much of the text. The charge was related to the collection of your overdue fees, it'd be unfair for other units to have to bear this charge.
 
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