Professional Association Services

PAS, What A Disaster Our association had been with PAS for many years. During that time we went through a series of managers. Some seemed little better than secretaries doing the barest minimum of work. Others were decent but didn?t last long working for this company. After expressing frustration, Susan Hoffman the owner stepped in to take our account. This was the beginning of our real nightmare. At first things seemed great as she presents herself very well and can talk the game as good as any and for those associations that think they are getting great service I am sure this is the stage that they are at. As long as we allowed her to run our board we had no conflicts. It wasn?t until everything became an unmistakable mess and several of us stepped in as board members that the real ?fun? began. Seeing the writing on the wall she did what she could and played every game she could think of with the election including some that violated California law to keep us off of the board. We then got onto the board and began to unravel the mess and have spent months sorting the whole thing out. The mistakes and problems are so numerous we would need pages to write them all up. Board packets were delivered late or not at all and then were full of useless bloat unnecessary for the meeting at hand all of which our association was billed for. Office supplies were billed at 100% markup. Meeting minutes were inaccurate with much information missing. Urgent phone calls and e-mails from our membership were returned only after several days or often ignored completely. We were billed for services not rendered. Vendors performed work without supervision or proper direction resulting in many jobs needing to be redone. Vendors would be contacted at the last minute for repairs the board voted to authorize, resulting in the association being billed for emergency service. We had all of our buildings fumigated for termites and the units were tented without removing the chimney caps requiring us to have them repaired. The exterminator was told by PAS to perform the work without performing a comprehensive inspection and when subterranean termites returned within the warranty period in large quantities, the exterminator would not honor the warranty citing the lack of the inspection. PAS was working hard to push through a roofing repair contract that included a contract with a company to manage the project that was completely bloated, would have bankrupt our association, and required that we hit our membership with an unimaginable special assessment. Subsequent review has shown the price of this roofing contract to be bloated by 40% to 50% and was unnecessary. We were provided with bad legal advice that resulted in having to seek the advice of an attorney only to find out had we taken PAS? advice we would have been in violation of California law. PAS advised putting money into accounts that far exceeded the FDIC limit putting the association?s assets at great risk. We were billed for services not rendered by PAS. Meetings were cancelled at the last minute without proper notice to the association. The board spent more time arguing with PAS than executing the standard business. At the end we could not get free of them fast enough. When we finally fired PAS, they refused to return the $825.00 retainer and the bank paid them for an extra month, which they also refused to return even though they were given ample notice well within the contractual amount of time. After cheating us out of nearly $2000.00, PAS refuses to communicate with us. In the process of fixing all the damage done by PAS to our association we have contacted many vendors including management companies, accountants, and lawyers. All have gotten work from PAS? prior accounts and they have all informed us that our experience was typical. All of these vendors have made a fair amount of money straightening out the mess that PAS has left in their wake. If you are with PAS do everything you can to get out. If you are considering them for your association stay as far away as you can. I would be happy to present examples to any HOA considering hiring this company demonstrating what we went through.