Tevye: And in the circle of our little village, We’ve always had our special types. For instance, Yente the matchmaker, Reb Nachum the beggar… And most important of all, our beloved Rabbi.
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
Leibesh: Rabbi, may I ask you a question?
Rabbi: Certainly, Leibesh!
Leibesh: Is there a proper blessing… for the Tsar?
Rabbi: A blessing for the Tsar? Of course! May God bless and keep the Tsar… far away from us!
One of life’s great mysteries of is how homeowner’s associations (HOAs) apparently seem utterly surprised that their popularity does not even approach the level of support for your average run-of-the-mill pond scum.
In fairness, I must draw a distinction between the homeowner’s association itself and the overbearing collection of imbeciles and sociopaths that is their contracted management company which handles most of the day-to-day harassment operations.
The quality of the people elected to run the HOA itself has improved dramatically from the bad old days when I first moved to this neighbourhood over 15 years ago.
For many years, I stopped attending the annual meeting after witnessing such stunningly childish behaviour concerning the election of new officers which included one candidate throwing a huge temper tantrum and storming out after withdrawing his name for the presidency of the HOA. The nominations were then duly closed only to have that individual come back into the room and demand to be allowed to stand for election in spite of the nominations being closed.
And the officers of the time actually allowed that despite it being a gross violation of Roberts’ Rules of Order and the objections of more than one of us in the audience.
Fortunately, his tantrum and attempted emotional power play didn’t actually work but it wasn’t like the person that did get elected was really much better in my opinion who definitely allowed the perceived “power” of her office colour her decisions.
I figured the three children I actually was duty bound to look after was more than enough excitement for me and that point was reiterated a couple of times to the other neighbours who tried drafting me to be a member of that circus.
The way I reckon it…my relationship with the HOA is happiest when they endeavour to leave me to live in peace at the private end of my little cul-de-sac and I return the favour to the best of my ability.
But if I *NEVER* have to deal with that management company of theirs *EVER AGAIN*, I will be so delirious with joy.
I’m not talking about the odd “violation notice” they send round that the lawn hadn’t been mowed as often as they wish. It doesn’t seem to concern them that the reason it hadn’t been mowed was a 2-3 week period of steady rain they should have been well aware of which makes the mowing the lawn more an exercise in the lawn mower going mud bogging without benefit of 4×4 or a real engine with the power to make it work.
It’s even more hilarious when more often than not I get that notice literally the day of or the day after Nicholas mows the lawn and I have to waste valuable time to prove to them that it’d already been done and that I’d like my good name restored to me.
No, the thing that’s always bothered the hell out of me about Charleston Management (or manglement, more like!) is that their attitudes are generally unpleasant at the best of times and their accounting practices concerning the annual dues border on pure evil.
Their poor attitudes were on full display at the first annual meeting I attended. At the time, I didn’t realise that the budget we’d been presented had already been agreed between the management company and the HOA board who theoretically were supposed to work for us and our interests in a fiduciary capacity.
Thanks to North Carolina’s law governing HOAs being woefully inadequate, the board is allowed to agree the budget without presenting it first to the members much less taking in our views and a vote which seems more than a little stupid considering that there were many line items in that budget I had serious concerns about, not the least of which was the princely sum being extracted from us by that management company.
I didn’t think it was such an outrageous thing for me to question whether the two largest items in the budget had been put out to competitive tender nor did I think it unreasonable that the management company representative recuse herself from the proceedings so that we could discuss the management fee and increase they were not only demanding but apparently had already pocketed as a fait accompli in one of the most self-serving transactions I’d ever seen.
The representative actually refused to leave the room when asked. It was pointed out to her that her remaining in the room was a glaring conflict of interest by citing some requirement that she had to keep the minutes of the meeting, never mind that it was actually the elected secretary’s job to do that and they were more than capable of doing the job for the few minutes it’d take to have a quick conversation without her in the room.
She acted very much like the terrorist and our HOA board a bunch of hostages that seemed absolutely terrified of the prospect of defying her will.
She stayed and the kids and I left and it was only a couple of years later that I stopped bothering to waste my time attending those meetings until recently.
But my favourite of Charleston’s evil practices has to be the zeal and the glee they have in imposing late fees if they feel you’ve not paid the annual dues when they want them.
It doesn’t seem to matter that the check was cut and posted in the mail to arrive well before the due date.
They’ve tried to pull this stunt on me three times and I’m really kind of over the fact that their accounting in practice seems to differ wildly than the stories they like to tell me of them.
The last time this happened, the person at least had the honesty to eventually admit that the checks had landed on someone’s desk who happened to be on holiday and didn’t return until after the due date to finally post them at which point their accounting system had already applied the late fee.
This time I got the usual song and dance about how I should mail the dues earlier so that it arrives in time. Oh, I’m sorry that Mama and Papa Dollar haven’t been quite as copulative with plentiful offspring round The Nerdery as you’d fancy but I can hardly cause a check to be posted that doesn’t actually have the funds to cover it.
I’m pretty sure that’d irritate the credit union just a tad and the management company even more so that I’m sure they’d love to nail me for the treble damages up to $500 allowed under North Carolina law (NCGS § 6‑21.3) plus bank fees and the late fees they so love levying upon us.
The check was cut on 22 Jan and posted to arrive at the lockbox on 27 Jan 2026 which was more than enough time to be posted in the current month.
The lady I talked to today tried to sell me on the idea that the lockbox is cleared every single day and all checks are posted as of that date.
If that’s truly the case, then why does the check that actually was delivered to the lockbox on 27 Jan show on the back of the check that the date it was taken from the lockbox and stamped 30 Jan but wasn’t attempted to be deposited and posted to my account until 02 Feb which conveniently automatically triggered the late fee in violation of their supposed accounting policies?
I didn’t even receive the actual “late notice” in the post until the last week of February and of course they can’t be bothered to do a full day’s work on a Friday (they’re remote until noon and then off they pop for an early banker’s hours) which meant that the first time I could get someone on the phone was today.
After which their system decided to try to automatically nail me for another late fee stacked onto the first one!
To her credit, the person I talked to today was polite enough if you ignore the snide comment about mailing the check earlier she slipped into that conversation but the litany of excuses she offered that primarily it was the US Postal Service who were the rotters responsible for this debacle.
With the current Postmaster of the United States seemingly no better than his predecessor DeJoy who intentionally cut processing and sorting capacity to influence the 2020 and 2024 elections, certainly the US Postal Service is nowhere near as efficient and accurate as they once were as the gold standard.
Nevertheless, the postmark date still rules in terms of being the official date an item was posted even with the new policy where the postmark affixed to the letter/parcel may not actually be the date you drop it off unless you have the clerk explicitly do it in front of you.
But even with that possible delay from the date the check was cut and put into the post (22 Jan), they clearly received it on the 30th and should have posted it to the account that day…and they didn’t.
I can’t definitively say that it’s intentional. But I’ve seen enough of a pattern that even if it’s unintentional, someone is clearly banking on pocketing the ill-gotten cash by hoping that the improper late fees aren’t questioned nor the process that got them applied to the account.
Hopefully this will be the last year I have to deal with this as the credit union has finally gotten this management company to be an electronic vendor so they don’t have to cut and post a paper check when the annual dues are queued up for them in the credit union’s bill payment portal.
The cherry on the top of the experience was that even though I’d clearly proven my case and the representative did reverse the two charges against my account as they did the two previous times they pulled this stunt, it was clear that she wasn’t going to do much more than reverse the charges and make a brief note and not pass the feedback for process improvements along to the responsible people at the management company.
Apparently she thought that should be *MY* job.
Sorry lady, you don’t pay me enough to sort out your messy and evil accounting. And ignoring valuable feedback like that is just asking to build popular support amongst homeowners who pretty much uniformly hate your company to support legislation that will rein in most of the evil practices of the average HOA and their management companies exploiting the homeowners rather than serving their needs.
The General Assembly has seen a couple of attempted bills in the last two years alone and almost certainly there will be another filed come the session in April.
It’ll be nice to start dishing out to these management companies and abusive HOAs some of what us homeowners have been enduring for years.