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An
Opinion By Jan Bergemann
President, Cyber Citizens For Justice, Inc.
Published
July 16, 2016
I'm not sure if the boards hiring the Association
Services of Florida -- better known as ASSOCIA -- as their community
association management company, are aware that more or less the first
order of business of this company is to "squeeze" their vendors for
$150.00 -- claiming that is the charge for becoming a member of
their "PREFERRED VENDORS LIST."
Vendors receive communication from ASSOCIA,
asking them to go through the "ASSOCIA Vendor Access Compliance
Process". It's fine to ask for regular information, from address to
insurance info, but in my opinion the main reason for this "required
process" are the $150.00 fee the vendors are supposed to pay to
ASSOCIA.
And even if the vendor supplies all the
required info, ASSOCIA still considers the vendor not being in
"compliance" as long as the fee wasn't paid. That is minimum the tenor
of e-mails from ASSOCIA employees vendors sent to me, complaining about
the process.
Vendors complained as well that ASSOCIA is
withholding payment of long overdue invoices as long as the fee wasn't
paid. And if vendors are refusing to pay the fees the ASSOCIA employees
will work very hard convincing the board that this vendor is bad and
needs to be replaced a.s.a.p.
Let's be honest: Minimum in my opinion
charging a $150.00 fee to be placed on the ASSOCIA PREFERRED VENDORS
LIST is nothing short of a kickback, some may even call it "blackmail"
considering the methods used to strong-arm vendors into paying these
fees.
Remember, our friends in Texas warned us
when ASSOCIA made the move to expand its "services" to Florida. Remember
my opinion article: "TEXAS
SENATOR JOHN CARONA'S ASSOCIA INVADES FLORIDA." Well,
I think the complaints I heard from Texas about ASSOCIA had merits. I
consider their business practices to be dubious -- to say the least.
And I well remember the cheers
coming from Texas when voters finally succeeded in voting John Carona
out of office as a Texas senator, because the voters felt that he was
not representing their interest, but only the interest of his business.
But I guess we have to get used
to management companies with their own private agendas: Squeezing money
out of owners and vendors. And if the company's reputation goes sour,
they quickly change their name -- hoping that their prior misdeeds are
quickly forgotten.
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