½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

Electricity cut off without ever having received a bill or warning. Then water cut off again no bills or warning. The management agents then added their management fees plus an amount for water a month before my tenancy even started and told me unless I paid the full amount demanded. My water would not be turned back on. Has anyone else had a similar experience  ?

Last tenant might not have paid their bills and management fee.  The only way the management people can get their money is by turning off water and power. The owner of the place is playing this evil game in VN to pass on the problem to you.  This is very common practice in VN by landlords and there is no way out.  Owners are expecting renters to pay or leave and they will take the deposits.  There is no such thing as small claim court in VN.

@Anybetterwouldbe

You might want to try the...

Ho Chi Minh City tourist protection hotlines

Hotline number

In 2023, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism launched a new hotline for travelers. You can simply call the number 1022, then click ext 8 to contact the hotline for tourists.

Operation hours: 7:30 AM to 8:30 PM everyday

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"In particular, tourists can utilize Hotline 1022 – Extension 8 to register complaints or report issues related to their security, safety, and legitimate rights. This includes incidents involving property illegal activities, assault, stalking, or the loss of personal papers.

In such cases, the hotline operators will suggest appropriate solutions, guide tourists to connect with relevant authorities for assistance and resolution, and, if necessary, coordinate with personnel, including specialists from the Department of Tourism, to directly assist the tourists in liaising with the relevant agencies."

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Please let the forum know how you fare with this.

@yng68bld

Surely the law must protect the innocence.. only need to report to the ' right' authority.

@yng68bld

I have been informed by friends that normally the electricity or water company send at least 2 days warning before cutting off your utilities ? I noticed in my mailbox there were several of these notices for previous tenants.

I think you may well be right that the owner is doing this deliberately to pocket the deposit and then relet. And nothing can be done about this?

@Aidan in HCMC

Thank you for this Aidan

@davidlimjudah

Who is the right authority please?

@yng68bld

So no small claims court but is there any court where you can file a claim for recovery of deposit plus compensation for being forced to move out effectively allowing the owner to pocket the deposit. The admin here will not let me publicly name this development so no way of warning others to be aware of their practices to extort expats.

Who is the right authority please? - @Anybetterwouldbe

"...utilize Hotline 1022 – Extension 8...the hotline operators will suggest appropriate solutions, guide tourists to connect with relevant authorities for assistance and resolution, and, if necessary, coordinate with personnel, including specialists from the Department of Tourism, to directly assist the tourists in liaising with the relevant agencies."

They're the ones who can answer that.

@yng68bld

Just to mention I never refused to pay any bills. I just didn't receive any bills. The management agency accepted and confirmed to me that this was because they omitted to put my email address into their system that sends out any bills. They were part of a WhatsApp group where they could have simple sent me a message to say a bill was due? I did request they send me bills. It was not possible to change the electricity account to my name. I did try. If anyone else has suffered the same treatment it would be appreciated if they could contact me.

...The admin here will not let me publicly name this development so no way of warning others to be aware of their practices to extort expats. - @Anybetterwouldbe

There's very good reasons for this:

½ûÂþÌìÌà is very careful to control/limit potentially libelous content, as well as general attacks on the character of individuals or organizations.

It's simply not the purpose of this website to provide that type of forum (as outlined in the website terms of use and the forum code of conduct.)

You've allegedly had a bad experience there and you certainly have the sympathy of many of us for the individual issues you've encountered, but admin simply isn't going to allow your post to become a magnet for what could very well be considered to be libelous content.

This is especially important in the Vietnam forum, as the government here has very strict policies regarding libel, which can be extra tricky if your apartment management or ownership is well connected with government authorities.

Allowing a thread in the forum to essentially become a collection of attacks against a particular business or person could conceivably get the website banned in Vietnam, so "host nation sensitivity" is always a consideration for the moderators.

The website owner (Julien) regularly shares his vision of a safe space where ideas & experiences & facts can be shared in a very harmonious manner.

You've received some very good feedback about where you might be able to take your complaint.

The only other suggestion I would have is to contact the local committee person or the local police or an attorney to see if they can be of any assistance.

Good luck!

O.B.

I can understand the reasons you state here. I have contacted a lawyer who has advised me yes I can take action but the fees will be in excess of the 54 million lost. The lawyer has also advised the best course of action would be effectively a class action. But I don't know how I can contact any previous tenants in this residence.

I don't know how I can contact any previous tenants in this residence. - @Anybetterwouldbe

1. Create a free WordPress account and start a blog on the subject.

2. Create a YouTube channel to use with a face.book page, Insta.gram account and Whats.App channel on the subject.

3. MeetupDOTcom and InternationsDOTorg are other possibilities.

I can understand the reasons you state here. I have contacted a lawyer who has advised me yes I can take action but the fees will be in excess of the 54 million lost. The lawyer has also advised the best course of action would be effectively a class action. But I don't know how I can contact any previous tenants in this residence. - @Anybetterwouldbe

What were you advised to do by the hotline operators suggested to you in post #4?

. The admin here will not let me publicly name this development so no way of warning others to be aware of their practices to extort expats. - @Anybetterwouldbe

You have posted your side, but we have no way of knowing if you are being truthful or not. It's just as possible you are disgruntled for some reason and want to hurt their business.

Given that there is no way to know, the forum can't take sides in any way.

...we have no way of knowing if you are being truthful or not. It's just as possible you are disgruntled for some reason and want to hurt their business.
Given that there is no way to know, the forum can't take sides in any way. - @Fred

I don't use the app but I hear that's a huge problem on Yelp.

Google Maps is also full of haters trying to destroy a business or redirect potential customers to a competitor.

I am certainly disgruntled. I have contacted lawyers and sent them full details of the WhatsApp group chat between myself, the managing agent, the owner and the estate agent. They have advised me I have a case but that their costs would be in excess of the 54 million deposit.

@Aidan in HCMC

I will contact them Aidan and post the result here and many thanks for your help.

@yng68bld
Surely the law must protect the innocence.. only need to report to the ' right' authority. - @davidlimjudah

My post is not about problems of a tenant vs. a landlord. It's about the "right" authority.

in January of 2023, I was pickpocketed in a public location -- a theater -- in HCMC. I didn't know I'd been "had" until I was out of the venue and on the street reaching for my wallet. But I did get a good look at the guy who did it (grey shirt and pants, glasses with round frames and lenses, shorter than me).

I mentioned this to the hotel receptionist where I was staying and they recommended that I go to the police and report it. The US Consulate also said on their website that I should report it to the police as the Consulate and the police can do nothing about it or for that matter even keep any kind of record or statistics on crime if it is not reported.

So I agreed to go to the local police station in the neighborhood where the crime had been committed. The police refused to take a statement from me *unless I said that I had "lost" my wallet at that venue!* I had two men from the hotel with me, one of whom was fluent in English and Vietnamese, so I am quite sure there was not a misunderstanding due to language barrier. The hotel translator, as we drove back to the hotel in a car belonging to the hotel, said that the police officer didn't want to take the report because he didn't want his precinct to have the blot on his tally of crime statistics.

This comported with a tour guide in a beach town a few days before saying that the police there "were pretty much useless." They could hardly be bothered to investigate a crime, even a murder, they said.

And so, yes, cops are cops, they are necessary, and they do what they do! It's not always transparent why they behave the way they do. So much for the proper authority I say. They are not 100% reliable. They might not even be 80% reliable.

Tread carefully.

@Lennerd

Not sure how long you have been in VN, but I am taking a guess you do not understand how it works in VN.  As you know its a communist country, but things work very differently from the western world.  As a foreigner, you are a walking ATM to the locals, including the police.  The amount of corruption is likely beyond your imagination.  It's not that the cops are not willing to help, but they will show interest if you make the right offer, it's the MO. 

@Lennerd Not sure how long you have been in VN, but I am taking a guess you do not understand how it works in VN. As you know its a communist country, but things work very differently from the western world. As a foreigner, you are a walking ATM to the locals, including the police. The amount of corruption is likely beyond your imagination. It's not that the cops are not willing to help, but they will show interest if you make the right offer, it's the MO. - @dcattycpa,

I've lived in Asia for 27 years, two of them in Vietnam. I've been to Thailand a dozen times, Japan three times -- once for a month-long stay; twenty years in India. Yes. The types of bribe-seeking corruption you reference is known to me. I have yet to encounter *that* type of corruption in Vietnam other than the "coffee money" I paid (VND 200K) at the border to smooth the way for my companion to get her visa when she didn't have the requisite number of blank pages in her passport.  This kind of bribe-seeking is all around in Asia, not so much in the USA.

I met an Indian guy at my American university studying mining and oil-drilling engineering. He bailed on his degree program because his family connections had landed him a government job back home in India. He told me that the bribes alone in that job would be several times what he could ever earn as an engineer in mining or drilling. So, off he went.

In America, the bribery takes a different turn. There, you can buy a president for USD $300 million, if you're the richest man in the world and have naked, blatantly obvious conflicts-of-interests -- no problem. Senators can be had for quite a bit less -- but the bribes are called "campaign contributions" and there's a thousand loopholes to get you through what appears on the face of the law as obstacles to giving, er, bribery. Trying to bribe a police officer at a traffic stop, however, can go badly for the erstwhile bribe giver. . . .