I’ve encountered two expensive and frustrating shopping centre landlord situations recently:
- The imposition of a post box fee – it now costs $50 to have a post box where mail is delivered. This is the box we’d always used. It’s in a location where it’s always been. It’s a location they can’t make other money off.
- The mandatory change to power provider. They say it will be cheaper. By the time we pay their mandatory supply fee and then for our usage our power bill will go up by $200 a month. This is nothing to do with the carbon tax, merely a money grab from someone, probably in part the landlord.
I mention this to show that while shopping centres are magnets for valuable traffic, this comes at an every changing cost.
GREED. Landlords this is the word that describes them. I would love to see legislation that makes all shopping centres strata titled and provide real competition rather than allow the mini monopolies to continue.
Cant you get a post office box and tell them to stick it or get delivery to the shop direct. Probably not. they know they have you by the proverbials.
Our Centre post boxes were damaged and so no mail was getting in. Australia Post (We deliver) refused to deliver mail to us, or to the Centre Manager so we could collect it from there. All our mail was Returned to Sender! We had to hire a post box to get mail – from Australia Post….
Surely having somewhere where mail can be delivered is a basic part of any lease? I’d be going to Fair Trading to find out about the legality of this.
Aust Post refuse to deliver to us o we had to rent a post box too.
On greedy landlords, we have had boom gates now for 4 weeks. Our traffic is down by over 900 sales in this time, not good before Christmas.
Id seriously be questioning the energy provider change.
How do you get out of an existing supply contract? Are there provisions in the lease that allow them to determine the provider? Are those provisions legal in respect to competition legislation (exclusive dealing or third line forcing)?
we can’t get out of the contract but they can force us to change suppliers not billers. It’s nuts.
Our outgoings have tripled in 5years. The centre has never been full and now there is a third supermarket (we have Woolworths, Coles are next door and Aldi down the road) vying for consumers.
The days of Coles or Woolworths being the drawcard are dead and buried. Yet they are getting better and better deals.
Whats the difference between an electricity supplier and biller?
I thought the electricity supply market was separated into distributors (monopolies that manage the infrastructure) and retailers (those who sell to end-users).
The supplier provides the infrastructure and the biller is the power retailer.
Ah, must be different in NSW. Infrastructure is a monopoly here – provided only by one distributor in every area. You only get a choice of retailer.