As HOA Maintenance Fee Delinquencies Increase, Financial Burdens Of "Bulk Billing" Contracts Grow For Fee-Paying Unit Owners

In Virginia Beach, Virginia, WVEC-TV Channel 13 reports:

• Marilyn Castro wants to get rid of her telephone land line, but if she does, she still has to pay for it. She's one of many residents in a subdivision developed by LM Sandler of Virginia Beach. Many Sandler developments are under bulk billing contracts for communications services.

• Bulk billing provides residents a bundle package for phone, Internet and cable services at a discount. Developers often make the agreements before ground is broken on a development so that the services come with the purchase of a home. The bill for the services is attached to what residents pay their homeowners association. Under the agreement, homeowners pay for the deal no matter what. That's just one of the things they don't like.

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• The communications services agreement also say if a homeowners association is 60 days late paying the cable bill, cable can be shut off to the entire complex. That includes paying customers. In some bulk billing agreements, homeowners end up picking up the tab when other residents fail to pay.

• At a complex in Florida, every time a homeowner went into foreclosure and stopped paying, the cable bill went up for other residents. Casey Taylor lives in Suffolk's Remington Park, another Sandler development. "It's detrimental to the spirit of the community when you look at your neighbor and say, 'I wonder if I'm paying your cable bill,' Taylor says.

For the story, see Residents fight mandatory bundle agreement.