So this happened two weeks ago in my apartment- we have an air conditioner and the radiator of the aircond (not sure if this is correct but basically what I meant is the fan thingy which normally placed outside) which is placed on my balcony was blown and there was a fire. after a panic attack to shut the fire off and 3 gallons of water later, I figured that there was a towel and this towel was stuck in the aircond radiator and cause the fire.
I don't know whose the owner of this towel and despite the policy to not hanging things on the balcony, it seems like one of my irresponsible, reckless and selfish neighbor dont even care so he/she hung their towel outside anyway.
So I called up an electrician who come and fix my air cond and it cost me $1300 in total.
I tried to contact the owners corp manager and my building manager who does not sound interested nor care and said this is not their problem and nothing they can do or nor it is claimable through the insurance.
I don't have home and content insurance and I don't know whose the owner of the towel. so I thought.. oh well nothing I can do..
I was kind of accept this already and thinking its just one of those bad luck that I just need to accept and fork out $1300 from my own pocket until yesterday I met someone (a stranger) who said he is a builder. We casually talked as we were bored and wait for our car which being serviced . one conversation lead to another and we talked about how everything is so expensive these days bla bla and then I bring the topic in as I just lost $1300 due to the fire bad luck incident. This stranger said to me that I should fight my way to claim this through the owners corp.
Now.. any advise from anyone with experience or knowledge would be greatly appreciated .. do you think its true it should be claimable? do I need to fight further? or does this stranger is only talking crap?
Thanks all :)
If the air conditioner is listed as common property you could get them to repair that.But it is probably not - check your strata document, but it probably says something like the air conditioning system within your lot is your responsibility, and the parts outside of your lot are maintained by the owners corporation.
The towel unfortunately is not really relevant. If you knew who it came from, maybe you could get that particular person to pay up. You can't get the owners corp to pay up because there is a high likelihood someone in their building dropped the towel. Maybe you could argue they were negligent and contributed to the dropping of the towel if they allowed people to hang towels on balconies - but you've already said they don't allow that. So its not their fault it happened.
Overall this situation sounds like a good argument for buying contents insurance really.