Earlier this month, I rang up the HOA’s community management company who had once again tried to nail me for a late fee on the annual assessment even though their own representative swore up and down that checks in their lock box are posted the day they are taken from the lockbox.
Never mind that the image of the back of the check had a stamp proving it was taken from the lock box on 30 Jan 2026 but it wasn’t posted to my account until 02 Feb 2026 which of course their accounting system was more than happy to apply a late fee I didn’t owe.
Mind you, I didn’t discover this until the end of the month for a statement that was supposedly generated on 31 Jan 2026 but didn’t arrive in the post until the end of February and had only been mailed a day or two prior from…Raleigh.
Yes, the same city I actually live in!
I realise that the USPS is having a hard time moving the mail with the current Postmaster General continuing the stand down of sorting capacity of his predecessor as part of a broader vote suppression exercise but even they can tote a First Class letter from one side of Raleigh to the other in less than a week.
I had thought that the matter was done and dusted so that I could go on to far more productive things but the USPS Informed Delivery EMAIL told me today that I had another letter from the management company in what looked suspiciously like a billing statement envelope.
And I wasn’t surprised to find that the bill was dated 28 Feb 2026 but only arrived in my hands today and it was still showing they wanted to nail me for the late fee x 2!
In fairness, that conversation on the phone wasn’t until 02 Mar 2026 so if this bill truly was printed on that date, the reversal of fees I’d been promised wouldn’t have been reflected.
But when *I* am thinking it’s sorted out and I take a quick glance at a bill and it appears that it isn’t, I was so ready to pick up the phone and let them know what I think of an accounting system that apparently can’t do proper accounting and an office that can’t put things in the post in a timely fashion.
I really can’t help but think that’s by design to ensure that the homeowner has no chance of talking to them and getting corrective actions done and posted before their accounting system automatically adds on another fee in their favour.
That is just plain wrong and is part and parcel of why HOAs and especially their pet management companies have had legislation filed every year on Jones Street and I’ve got to imagine that one of these years they’re finally going to piss off enough people that the politicians who have been bought off by them have no choice but to give in to have a chance of keeping their seat in the General Assembly.
Fortunately for them, I logged onto the management company’s portal and saw that the reversals had finally been done on 19 Mar 2026 and that the balance is zero.
If I left it up to them, I’d likely not learn of that until the end of April on a statement printed 31 Mar 2026.
Why it took them *17* days (or *14* “business days”) to actually implement what the lady on the phone agreed to do on 02 Mar 2026 and should have had more than enough time to make that happen truly beggars belief.
It doesn’t seem to be asking too much of a management company that’s siphoning $12,000 out of our HOA’s bank account to actually be far more timely and focused on actually attending to the needs of the homeowners who *EMPLOY* them in a professional and courteous fashion.
Funny thing…they’re awful quick to try to hit you with a violation or harass you about your lawn (often days after it’d already been sorted out!) but when it comes time to making things right that they did very wrong…glaciers move faster than these people!
But a closer inspection of the line items in this latest bit of financial Fantasyland masquerading as a bill revealed an even more insidious perversion of accounting that was guaranteed to stack on another bogus late fee.
It’s equally possible that it’s a bookkeeper manually entering data who hasn’t learnt proper transaction posting because these people are what IT people would refer to as “lusers” and their technology stack is woeful at best if the accounting system and their web portal are anything to go by with the vintage appearing the 1990s that their company was formed in accounting to the NC Secretary of State.
When the payment posted, they did it in such a way that didn’t actually match the payment amount to the annual dues amount.
Instead, they decided to pay their bogus late fee first to leave a $20 balance which rolled over into March and triggered the second late fee.
It’s possible their system is just that badly implemented.
But things like this make me strongly suspect that the accounting system is being intentionally exploited for potential illicit gain which is not only a violation of the fiduciary responsibility they have to the HOA that employs them (and by extension the homeowners they’re constantly telling that we *ARE* the HOA).
I think if the pattern is consistent across all of their communities, there is likely a strong case for theft of property by false pretenses on their part from homeowners who might not catch their sleight of hand and just pay the fees without questioning to avoid potential retaliation from the management company.
For now, I’m going to try to remember their brain-dead accounting system probably has one more letter it’s going to barf out at me and then hopefully I’m done dealing with them until they screw up the application of my payment to the account…again. 🙁