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Dear Resident
In order to set up the door entry system on your phone, please contact Principia providing your phone number and a flat number.
The setup cost is £35.
The cost can be added to a service charge bill if you are are a lessee, otherwise please contact Principia accounts department to make a credit/debit card payment (0207 341 0220. Option 2).
Once payment is received Principia will contact Anchor Doors to add your phone to the system. This process may take a few days.
A kind note the phone number will remain on the door entry system until another £35 is paid for a new number to be added – we recommend using a landline number as this number is not normally taken with you to a new address should you move in the future (alternatively the £35 needs to be paid again to remove the old number).
£35 to simply change the number the machine calls is a rip-off, particularly as we already pay a yearly rental for the entry phone service.
I’ve had 3 different flats within GW and several new phone numbers while I’ve been in my current flat, so I reckon Pincipia/Anchor Doors have had well over £200 off me for changes which presumably only take a few keyboard clicks to make. It feels a bit like when your car insurance company charges you a £50 “administration” fee when you want to change something simple like your number plate.
Given the regular turnover of tenants in the building, I suppose it’s a nice little earner for someone though.
Surely we should be able to make one change a year, say, without further charge?
This information should be included in the residents guide plus the porters should also know about it.
I agree this seems very excessive. £35 is a lot to pay for every new change. Who can we take this up with?
£35 to set up the door entry system seems reasonable for either new residents or tenants moving into Globe. Although, agree it would be helpful if the various Building Guides include the Door Entry Set-Up information. Initially, it was one of the Concierge Team who gave us the information.
Ive owned my flat since 2000 but Ive never been told about the telephone access even though i asked a porter. So fundamental information like this should be easily accessible for all residents.
In this day and age, I would expect to be able to control my settings for the entry phone online. £35 would be a reasonable charge to set up a new online account with the provider – after that a user should be able to login and make as many changes as he or she wants. So if you were away from your flat for a few weeks, you could change your contact number accordingly. This isn’t advanced technology by any means – we’ve all been able to divert calls to our mobiles for decades!
Diane – this should mean that new residents would still need to pay the charge, but existing residents would not have to pay it multiple times.
The OP is a director – perhaps he could look into who the £35 charge goes to? Is it the amount charged by Anchor Doors, or is some or all of it a ‘handling’ fee charged by Principia?
Thanks Kamil for responding so quickly.
Just a couple of thoughts:
1. Why does the system cost £2,000 a year to maintain? What goes wrong with it every year that is so expensive to fix?
2. Who pays for the cost of the calls from the intercom to individual flats? Presumably the panel on the street must be connected to a phone line that incurs line rental and call fees?
I wonder if we aren’t actually paying rental for the service and Anchor Doors are simply labeling it as a ‘maintanence’ (ie subscription) fee? Two grand a year seems a lot pay for the cost of a phone line and calls, plus the occasional call out to fix the panel if and when any problems develop.
Dear Howard
The budget item of £2k is an allowance only. It covers the anticipated call charges and maintenance and is likely to be below budget at the year end. The call charges are payable to Virgin Media alone and are met by the service charge. Anchor Doors charge only for maintenance call outs and nothing else.
I hope this clarifies?
Andrew
Dear All
The Board have followed up on the action to identify alternative intercom systems.
To re-iterate, the current intercom system operates as follows: A) we put aside £2k from the service charge to cover calls (Virgin Media) and ad-hoc maintenance plus B) there is a one-off £35 charge each time a resident changes a phone number associated with a given flat.
Having investigated 3 major and 2 smaller intercom providers, we have come to a conclusion that a new more technologically advanced system will cost a minimum £10k-£12k for subscription only. There will be an additional setup cost. We believe this is too expensive in comparison to what we currently have.
That said, we welcome any cheaper intercom ideas residents might have and we would be happy to investigate.
Regards
KamilHi Mascha – do you mean the old or the new system?
The £10k-£12k subscription payment for a new system is attributed to using proprietary software and on-going maintenance. We currently pay no subscription whatsoever. The £2k is mainly for calls and some sporadic maintenance.
just a quick search, for less than 1000 pound one-off costs, you get:
up to 500 flats
3 phones per flat can be registered
phones can be fixed or mobilehttps://www.locksonline.co.uk/Wireless-GSM-Door-Intercom-Entry-System-for-up-to-500-flats.html
No maintenance fee, bit more flexible as what we have now etc. etc.
I am sure there are more solutions like this out there.
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