Confrontation

reminds me. Yesterday in the elevator in our building I spotted a notice stuck to the wall. I can’t read chinese (at all) but I saw that the notice had our Apartment number on it, and a dollar amount that equalled the monthly maint fee.

I took it to work to get it translated. Turns out I am supposed to have missed a maint fee payment. I will look into it, as I have got all the receipts so there’s a misunderstanding…but the point is, why didn’t they A) give me a call B) put it in my mail box C) slip it under the door.
I mean geez, they know who I am, my ph # and where I live, so what’s with plastering it out in public?

[quote=“truant”]
I mean geez, they know who I am, my ph # and where I live, so what’s with plastering it out in public?[/quote]At the risk of reprimand for veering so far off topic… It’s SOP. You can be thrown out of your apartment for not paying the maintainance fees (even if you own it) and they need records of your not having paid. IIRC it’s in the applicable laws that the building management association have to make public announcements of finances and missed payments are on the list of things they’re obliged to report. It isn’t vindictive or personal. If your building has a security service then a rep will show up at the building management meetings. It’s a good chance to find out all this kind of thing.

It’s a cowardly attempt to shame you and discourage others. I wouldn’t mind but they were always wrong in my case. You’d think they’d double check before doing it. The funny thing was that it was an entirely useless strategy as there were people on the list who owed tens of thousands of dollars.

Report to who? What purpose does it serve to make this information public apart from the one I mentioned above. It’s a matter for the tenant and the management, what does it have to do with anybody else?

If you go look it up, you’ll find that building management associations are under legal obligation to keep financial records, hold meetings, publish the minutes of those meetings etc etc just as any civic association. They have the legal right to demand that residents pay management fees set, they are obliged to publish the amounts they collect and also what they spend. Amounts due but not collected have to be made up from the general fund which all the residents contribute to, so they have the legal right to know who is not putting up thier fair share.

Again, it’s not spite or stealth. It’s thier duty to publish these lists. Some of these management associations control large sums of money and there are often some greedy residents looking for a chance to siphon some off, and those looking for evidence of fraud. Publishing everything helps keep this in check.

If you have residents in your building that won’t pay fees the management has the right to bar them from the building, even if they own thier apartment. If that fails to get the money owed the apartment can be sold by court auction to recover the money and return it to the management association. It happens all the time.

I never had anything more than a passing interest in this stuff, but then I bought an apartment and had to do some research.

I disagree; because it is a community service fee, every resident has has the right to know who is not pulling their weight and paying their fees. Ours lists every apartment in the building with guanyi fei payments (or lack thereof) for the past twelve months. Pisses me off to know that I make a point to pay on time when others are four months behind.

Report to who? What purpose does it serve to make this information public apart from the one I mentioned above. It’s a matter for the tenant and the management, what does it have to do with anybody else?[/quote]
Did you miss where he wrote “to make public announcements?” Sliding a note under the door is not a public announcement. Considering the fact that I have seen this notices in many building, I dobut it’s and attempt to shame anyone.

[quote=“yeti”]
I wouldn’t mind but they were always wrong in my case. You’d think they’d double check before doing it. The funny thing was that it was an entirely useless strategy as there were people on the list who owed tens of thousands of dollars.[/quote]
Would you prefer that they reported this to a credit bureau, like they do in the U.S. after attempting to notify you a few times. And you could spend hundreds of dollars to try to get them to correct their mistake. What was a useless strategy? Getting people who owed money to pay it?

[quote=“Vannyel”]
Would you prefer that they reported this to a credit bureau, like they do in the U.S. after attempting to notify you a few times. [/quote]
that’s my whole point, The first I heard about it is when I saw the notice. If they’d “attempted to notify me a few times” and I ignored them, well fine, I’ve got what’s coming to me.
Like I said, I have a receipt for the fee they say I’ve missed.

[quote=“Vannyel”] Considering the fact that I have seen this notices in many building, I doubt it’s and attempt to shame anyone.
[/quote] Not according to my Taiwanese Collegue - that’s EXACTLY what they are attempting to do and it’s fairly normal apparently. The ‘fear’ of losing face is the driving force in making people pay on time.

[quote=“truant”]Not according to my Taiwanese Collegue - that’s EXACTLY what they are attempting to do and it’s fairly normal apparently. The ‘fear’ of losing face is the driving force in making people pay on time.[/quote]Well, I kind of wish this were true.

My building has had two vehicle break-ins in the underground parking lot. Both times the thief walked in through the front door, which is supposed to be locked and opened only from inside or by someone with a card. But, some of our residents are lazy pigs and don’t latch the door when they pass through it. Both times we could see from the surveilance tapes who had been the last person to pass through the door, and was therefore responsible for letting the thief into the building. The victims were advised to take the matter up with them, but I wanted thier names made public to shame the other lazy pigs into shutting the door behind them. So far I’ve failed to get this done, and each time I’ve raised the point it’s been agreed that this would work, but it’s been rejected on the grounds that it would humiliate the offenders beyond reason.
I don’t think the people in my building are overly or unusually sensitive to other people’s feelings, so I guess you’d find this quite typical. I don’t see them refusing to humilate some people for indirectly causing damage and loss, and then rushing to humiliate others for merely missing a fee collection deadline… Then again it could be routine antilogic or simply that I just don’t understand this aspect of Taiwanese culture.