- This topic has 8 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 11 months ago by .
-
Topic
-
G’day,
The story goes: I left my pushbike under the care of one of my friends who lives, renting in an apartment building while I went away for a couple of months over the Christmas period.
He mistakenly tethered the bike too close to a fire hydrant assembly then went away himself.
I come back and the bike is gone. My friend tells me that he found a note that’d been passed to all tenants, essentially saying “Move the bike or it’ll be confiscated,” dated in the last few days of November.
The note also stated that the bike would need to be picked up or it’d be “disposed of” – but it didn’t give a location.
I called the reception, who was very abrupt, who said it was probably taken to the tip upon pick-up.
She’s “checking it out” and “will get back to me”, but I’m wondering what the best course of action for this situation should be? Considering neither I or my friend had any real notice, being away and all.
Thanks.
PS. My auto-correct is a dumbass. It’s Bicycle lol.
-
Replies
-
So your friend endangered the lives of all in the building and you expected to still get “real” notice even when you were away?
But they still gave your friend (and all in the building) notice to move the bike ” in the last few day of November”.
Think yourself lucky that it’s only the bike that is gone.
Your gripe (if any) is with your friend – as you say, you left the bicycle in his care. It seems he didn’t take very good care of it.
In the circumstances you are lucky you are not being charged for removal of the bicycle, which shouldn’t have been on common property anyway.
By the by, I believe the new strata laws are going to include rules for dealing with abandoned goods, bringing them into line with the laws governing goods left at the end of a tenancy.
These rules will included the storage and return of removed goods in exchange for the payment of a fee for storage.
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.
Ah, Liam,
I thought my Flat Chat buddies were a little harsh too, but I know where they’re coming from.
To put it in context, once you have lived in or run strata schemes for a while, you get weary of people who park in the wrong places, leave stuff lying around for others to deal with and generally take advantage of others’ good nature. It doesn’t take long for the tolerance threshhold to wear thin.
Your pal is a numpty and deserves to lose the $700 (if not your friendship). I’m guessing your friend’s neighbours – or their building managers – were just trying to maintain a little order in their homes. To some, a mis-parked bike is the thin end of a wedge that leads to mayhem and chaos. You would be astonished to know how much stuff is just left behind by people – owners and renters – who have no further use for it but can’t be bothered to dispose of it properly.
Every couple of years my building does an audit of all the bikes in our storeroom. Every time up to a dozen bikes are discovered to have been abandoned by their owners who have either traded up or moved out (or both). Those bikes are then handed over to a charity that sends them overseas.
There are a number of charities that recycle bikes for use either here or abroad. So console yourself with the thought that your bike is probably making a big difference to someone else’s life right now.
And if anyone is interested in finding a re-bicycling (pun intended) program, click on THIS LINK to learn more
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.
When people complain that an OC (or even other people) have treated them shabbily, I think they should consider how a similar situation would have been handled in the public arena:
What if your bike was tethered too close to a fire hydrant in the street? Do you think the authorities would wait until you had been contacted before removing your bike? Do you think you would escape a fine? And if there actually had been a fire emergency and the bike’s position delayed the fire brigade by even a minute, do you think the affected people or the public in general would have been sympathetic towards you? Ignorance is never an excuse.
I think you’re lucky not to be fined. I think you should also apologise to the OC.
@Austman said:I think you’re lucky not to be fined. I think you should also apologise to the OC.
And I think everyone needs to get off their high horses. The person at fault here is Liam’s idiot (ex) friend who not only doesn’t bother to read his building’s by-laws but doesn’t read notices from the building management. He ain’t exactly Robinson Crusoe in that regard.
The real issue here is how Owners Corps deal with “abandoned” goods. There is no clear regulation on that (unlike in the residential tenancy Act).
I recall in my first rental, finding that the resident owners had decided that they and they alone were entitled to use the storage space and we caught them in the act of loading a locked trunk full of our personal stuff – with labels all over it saying who it belonged to – on to a skip for disposal. “You’re a tenant and we didn’t know whose it was,” the brass-necked martinet from the EC said when challenged.
So let’s get back to the initial question. In the absence of any clear evidence of where the bike has gone, I believe Liam or his mate could claim on theri home and contents insurance becasue the bike has been stolen since a) it’s not there any more and b) no one knows where it is.
Let’s talk about that. Any further derogatory comments will be spiked because I will not allow this forum to turn into a squabble-fest.
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.
Sorry – I’m not meaning to be high horsed, but this was an important safety issue too and not just an abandoned goods issue. Safety always comes first in my book.
On the abandoned goods issue – I think if the goods are abandoned on common property an OC can dispose of them. It’s different if the goods are on lot property (eg in a car space).
We give some weeks notice that we will be removing the goods. We try to contact the owner (who is often unknown) and send a notice to all residents. We also place a notice in lobbies. We don’t have anywhere to store things so they are disposed of by our cleaners. Our cleaners tell me that they might hang on to ‘valuable’ items for a short while.
But if things are left in a dangerous location or are blocking access we take more immediate action. If we can, we’d move the item somewhere else in the meantime before eventually disposing of it as above.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.