One upon a time – round about 10 years ago – this website  and the newspaper column from which it sprung would trash the CTTT and Fair Trading on a fairly regular basis and, it has to be said, with great gusto.

I won’t dwell on the negatives – on either side – but we’ve been doing this dance for a decade now and it’s safe to say that both parties have learned a few moves that we didn’t have before.

More importantly, we are in step with each other much more often than we’re not.

It was with the realisation that we are have the same intention, to help people navigate the sometimes treacherous, often murky waters of strata living – and that we agree most of the time on the best way to do that – that I invited Fair Trading to take one of our sponsorship slots.

In the back of my mind was a gradual awareness that just about every time I have advice for someone in NSW about who to call to resolve a strata issue, I was directing them to a link to Fair Trading.

Well, now you can go straight there.  They have pride of place on the Forum page and you can click on their ad to get a link to their strata home page or you can phone the number on the display panel.

So, does this mean we will never criticise Fair Trading? You and they know us better than that.  Does it mean they endorse or even agree with everything that’s said on these pages? Absolutely not!

But their presence on the Flat Chat website is an acknowledgement that we are on the same side these days – and that’s your side.  The Fair Trading website now illustrates an awareness of and concern for the challenges of living in strata that simply did not exist before.

And one plus is that if you have any issues with the way your problem has been handled by Fair Trading, we now have a direct line to get to the bottom of matters.

Fair Trading are there for us and we are there for you.