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Hi, we were told we had to pay for new garage remotes because they changed the motor on the garage door and the old ones didn’t work. I would have thought it was for the owners corporation to pay.
Today someone came out to look at my intercom as it doesn’t open the entry door. He said it had to be replaced. The chairman of our owners corporation told him I would need to pay for this. Surely this too is a strata expense. It’s a fixture after all.
Please advise if both these costs are really my expense.
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We had to get a new motor also. Whoever arranged the garage door tradesman to do the work at your unit block should have been proactive and collected the existing remotes from residents to be re-programmed to the new motor once it was installed, and then given back to the owners/residents.
Our OC purchased 12 new additional pre-programmed ones from the garage door people to be sold by strata, to people when required. This saved the call out fee charged every time the tradesman had to come out and recouped our money spent on new remotes which went back into the bank. I wonder what your people are now doing to access the garage if they do not have a newly programmed remote. Since it is a past event in your case, I would enquire from strata if everyone else has had to pay for their remote or some i.e chairman, have obtained freebies. If you are a tenant, I would keep the remote when you move out as it is your property and indicate to the landlord that they have to buy it from you if they want it back. Make sure you get a receipt from strata.
The intercom issue depends on the reason for the fault. Was it vandalised or sabotaged in some way? Why is it now not working when it used to?
Fair Trading’s Who’s Responsible Memorandum clearly states that the intercom handset is common property, if the system is connected to more than one unit.
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To clarify – the memorandum has two references to handsets and therefore may be confusing.
The handset “within an individual lot” is the responsibility of the lot owner.
You would think the new motors would come with a pre programmed remote in the box. If you do get stuck with this keep in mind that you can buy programmable after market remotes cheaply online.
It’s interesting that if the Building Commissioner’s plan to introduce a “Duty of Care” to strata owners’ corporations comes to fruition, they won’t be able to choose not to pay for common property repairs. To the barricades!
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.