Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Hanson]

The building where I live - a villa - has recently been bought by a new owner. The new owner seems to have different expectations from me pertaining to building up-keep.

My gripes include:

- There's a dog in my building that is let free to run around. It poops everywhere and the crap stays there for days, even upto a week.

- The stairwell, which used to be cleaned quite well every week is now only being cleaned once a month, and it's a half-assed job.

- The garbage collection area on the street has gone to hell in a hand basket. The tenants in our building often don't use the appropriate waste bags (they're orange-colored where I am), and so the garbage collectors refuse to pick anything up. The result is an overflowing bin with food waste that the strays get into.

All of these things I consider to be part of "maintenance". We refused to pay for November, but now the new owner is asking for his maintenance fee for December, and I don't want to pay it.

Would you pay the maintenance fee? My worry is that he'll just take it out of our key money when we leave if I don't pay...

[marlow]

[aaabank]

I feel the same way about the maintenance fee. If the owner of the building isn't keeping up their end of the deal (maintaining the building), the fee shouldn't have to be paid. Unfortunately, I believe you are correctly predicting that the money would just be taken out of your key money at the end of your stay.
The only options I see are that you could call the owner/manager of the building to demand changes, or you could then call the local government housing department and file a complaint.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[mr. positive]

Good on ya, Young FRANKenstein, I'm honestly very surprised it worked out so well, but I'm happy for you. In my "secure" building a side door was left unlocked for about two weeks, even though a "security" person was sitting at a desk watching people walk through it the whole two weeks. If I wasn't in such a good neighborhood, I'd be a bit nervous leaving my wife and baby home all day...

[Young FRANKenstein]

[bassexpander]

I think your best bet is to:

1. Write a letter as above.

2. Have a Korean friend write you a letter for your neighbors to read, explaining the problem and that you'd like them to also sign the letter you are sending.


My former apartment complex (new) was charging us huge fees for dumb things we didn't need. By law, they had to make a list of building fees available, and I got one. The type was in about font size 4. This included 1 million won per month for a water cooler out front which nobody used (cost spread out over the whole building, but still), and paying a guy 2 million won per month to water a few plants on a balcony three times per day. They were even charging us the heat and maintenance fees of the unoccupied apartments! The ajumma got together and made a petition. They came to my door, and I signed it. It worked. My total monthly bill dropped by almost 100,000.

[cdninkorea]

How about this:

Write a letter, in Korean, stating all the problems. Say that if everyone gets together and refuses to pay the maintenance fee it will work, Tape it to everyone's door.

Would this work?

[mindmetoo]