Shaun Podbury and his crew at Coral Sea Property Management are rip off merchants!!
I am visiting my granny in Warsaw and she has an apartment in Townsville, Australia left to her by her now deceased boyfriend. She rarely visits anymore, since it's too far to travel and her english is not so good. So she put in managers.
She chose Coral Sea Property Management owned by Shaun Podbury. It was good at the start, but she started to get funny requests for money. Like maintanence she thought she already had done or seeing fees deducted from her rent she didn't know what was for, or asking to pay money into other accounts that were in other, slightly different names like Coral Sea Inc., or Coral Pirates, of Coral Fund. She showed me the emails.
After some time of this, and as the strange payment requests started to increase, she decided to ask Coral Sea to sell the property. They refused, giving lots of excuses, telling her it was a perfect time to rent, and that it makes money for her. But it clearly wasn't - it was costing her money.
When I visited granny she immediately she asked for my help (I lived in Sydney for 3 years, so I know how the Auzzies think and my boyfriend is still in Sydney, visiting me soon xxx). So I did my Victoria Mars investigation!
First I went on the web and asked a few of my friends in Sydney in the business (legal). I found that Shaun Podbury has a history of this. I then asked my boyfriend to check out some of the maintenance expenses my granny was receiving from Coral Sea Property Maintenance. That's his business, house building. He said two things to me: only one quote and very, very high (3 times higher he said!).
I wondered why and after reading granny's legal agreement with Coral Sea Property Manager, it became obvious why: they take 20% of all maintenance on the property! Whoa! My granny had even questioned why there were only quotes from the same contractors, and the answer she replied was "we trust them". Trust them already! Trust them to charge and split the money!! Rip off!
I calculated that my Granny paid more than 30,000 zlot to these f#$%kers, about 10,000 Australian in over charges.
She also had a problem with her tenant not paying. The one that Coral Sea chose. They said that not to worry that they would take care of it. They did, 6 months later - evicted. When she asked why it took so long, they said that there was a special clause in her rent guarantee agreement that meant they didn't have to pay. Coral Sea didn't care. They just wanted my granny's money.
During this time granny kept getting maintenance expenses.
So don't trust these people. My granny chose them because of their slick sales website, but they are real pirates. Would you let a pirate into your home? Don't let Coral Sea Property Management Pirates in. Because once they get their hooks in they bleed to dry.
I helped granny move to another rental property agency 2 weeks ago and it's peaceful again. Coral Sea Property Management were painful finish up, threatening to suit my granny for breaking her agreement. I'm in law though so I could see they were bluffing.
I also tried to talk with the owner Shaun Podbury but he was never available to talk with me. I wanted to challenge him directly on the over charging of maintenance and their special get out paying clauses in their contract.
I never got to speak with Mr Podbury.
I even heard on my last phone call to Coral Sea Property Maintenance a man say "tell that b#$%tch that I'm busy". That must have been the owner Shaun Podbury. Thanks Shaun, that final remark promoted me to post this report. Otherwise I would have let it go. My granny is not well and she dones't need the stress anymore.