Disputes and other happenings

Well, much has transpired since our last blog 2 weeks ago.

Firstly the aftermath of Irma. Perry and Tracie have been incredibly lucky. Apparently one end of their street which is 18-24" lower than where they are was inundated fairly badly and there are piles of house contents on the roadside which have been ruined. But their house was not touched. No water inside although they think that it was lapping against the glass French doors! Anyway, they were probably built with all this in mind and they held without leaking. The section was a bit of a mess with one large tree down and lots of debris. The paperweight (a.k.a. the Merc!) had tree branches all over it but was unscratched. One jetski was up on the lawn and the other wedged on the pontoon. That one may need checking for water intrusion into the engine but apart from that they are undamaged as well. So lucky. If the eye had passed over Miami the story would have been very different. Power and internet are both back on so apart from fixing things around the property all is almost back to normal.

One story made us laugh. One individual complained on social media that there was a pile of garden debris which remained uncollected in front of his house. He said it was disgraceful and would turn the grass brown! Someone else replied and said "don't worry. Maria will be along shortly and blow it all away!" However, it seems that Maria is taking a right turn well away from Florida and will likely eventually blow itself out in the Atlantic. Of course it was devastating again in the Caribbean but hopefully it won't impact the US East Coast anywhere.

In the meantime Jean had something which we think was a viral flu - zero energy and generally feeling terrible but no fever. This hasn't helped with dealing with the incompetent real estate company we've had to deal with but we're through that now. We're back in fighting trim. 

We've already mentioned the deficiencies in the apartment which were caused by First American Realty (FAR). Finally, around the end of August the last of these was satisfactorily fixed but it has taken 6 weeks of our time to organize. Just gross incompetence on the part of FAR. We also spent hours going through accounts and identified many areas where we were overcharged and in some instances items charged twice. We had had an initial quote late in 2016 and quite clearly told them that we had a price limit which they agreed in writing would be sufficient to finish the apartment to the required standard. However, 4 months later, after they had alleged that the apartment was ready for letting (and it wasn't), they then attempted to hit us for nearly 30% more with no supporting documentation! That was just before we left Malaysia. We've been in an escalating dispute situation ever since and have changed our lawyer and our property manager. It seems that we are in a strong position legally so we think it will eventually die down but it's been quite an unpleasant situation and definitely one which we had certainly not anticipated. FAR had done a reasonable job of the refurbishment except for the deficiencies which when added up, meant that the apartment was not rentable. It's just as well we arrived when we did.

But it seems to us that it's the way of the world these days. We've been harassed and bullied and threatened and these days it seems that this is always the first line of attack. No attempt to come to any sort of compromise or listen to an opposing argument - just "you pay or else". Well, in this case they picked on the wrong people; we don't respond well in this type of situation. Anyway, all is under control. Their employees have been instructed to have no further contact with us and are in fact withholding information from us - hence all the running around getting copies of documents etc.  We've changed the locks and finally had some good legal advice. It's also involved much administrative stuff with changing accounts with suppliers of Internet, cable TV, telephone, all utilities, and also changing the contact for the Body Corporate - and all in Spanish!! But we have had some wonderful help from some wonderful people so now hopefully we can get on with life. We think that it's simply a case of bad mismanagement on FAR's part and they are just trying to minimize their losses or maximize their profit!!

There's really not much else to report. The foregoing has been occupying our time and thinking just about 100% of the time. But we are getting some good insights into the Colombian legal system - yesterday we had to get the Deeds to the property printed off again - and notarized. So there we are in a taxi trying to give the driver instructions but we were well prepared. We usually write down the address to give to the driver and he actually helped in finding the Notary's office as it wasn't well signed. All good fun when your knowledge of  the language is sketchy to say the least, but again there are so many people who will help and there's always someone who speaks reasonable English. At least our lawyer and the new property manager are both fluent in English.

Got up at 4 this morning to watch the results of the NZ elections coming in. MMP certainly allows everyone's vote to count. And NZ falls over backwards to enable NZer's to vote overseas - provided yu are a NZ citizen and have been in the country sometime in the last 3 years. So, we downloaded our voting papers and because we don't have a printer, we emailed them to our finance broker (Alianza Valores) who by chance are occupying temporary premises only a 2 minute walk from the apartment. So, we toddled off up there and signed the papers and had them witnessed - then AV scanned and emailed them back to us. Then it was a matter of uploading them to the NZ Govt. website and sending an email to confirm that they had been received. In due course an email came back confirming that indeed everything was ticketyboo.  

It's certainly been a cliffhanger. Provisional results are (in percentages):
National 48.0

Labour 35.8

NZ First 7.5

Greens 5.9

TOP 2.2

Others 2.6

Under the MMP electoral system there is no representation until a party gets over 5% of the total vote, so now there are 4 parties in contention. NZ First holds the balance of power. There are 2 arguments. First, that National obtained the most votes of any single party and that therefore NZ First should coalesce with National giving a total of 55.5%. The other argument is that 52% of voters did not vote for National and that therefore there is justification for a Labour/NZ First/Greens coalition. Together they would hold 49.2% against National's 48% - a very slender and possibly unworkable arrangement. The main thing is that NZ First can keep the rest of them honest - which is a long overdue situation. The other argument of course is that NZF policies are possibly more in line with Labour/Greens and therefore that's a more obvious fit than NZF/National. Politics are fascinating!! It's Jim's interest really, although we are continually interested in events in the rest of the world as well. Particularly with Donald Trump who has inherited major problems from successive administrations - particularly the last one, and particularly Kim Jong-Un. And then there are all the vested interests, even from his own party, who are deliberately trying to sabotage his administration. Traitors, no less.

Cheers to all in Godzone and elsewhere

Jim and Jean

Medellin

Colombia