December 2019
From time to time every condo corporation requires a new condominium manager and/or management company. When this time comes, they may willingly relinquish access to e-mail communications, resident contact information and other potentially important records. They obtain a new e-mail address without consideration of the inconvenience and disruption to many hundreds or thousands of individuals. The result is additional work, delays, misunderstandings and errors. There is a cost in time and money to dealing with this cavalier approach to e-mail communication.
E-mail is more heavily used than the telephone. Every corporation has a telephone number which they control yet many willingly cede control of their e-mail account and information contained within it. One way this is done is by “borrowing” an e-mail address from their current management company; evident when a management company domain such as “@delcondo.com” or “@crossbridge.com” appears at the end of an e-mail address. Another is by allowing a condominium manager to create a private e-mail address fully under their control.
Condo corporations are businesses that can generate millions of dollars in revenues each year in the form of condo fees. As with any business of this size, it is expected that they take care in their management of personal or private information provided to them. Loss of this information, or access to it by a former employee or vendor, is inappropriate and unnecessary.
Take control of your e-mail address
- Establish a general e-mail address for management. Corporations with a website domain can create one for use by management such as management@domain.com. Free e-mail accounts are available for those without a website domain.
- Where there is a need for multiple e-mail addresses for separate individuals, have these set up by the corporation. Ensure your domain provider can forward communications from these accounts to a generic e-mail address and delete old e-mail addresses when no longer required.
Do not change an e-mail address unless absolutely necessary. It will take many months before everyone knows the new address. During this time communications will get lost and misdirected. There will be a cost to fixing mistakes that result from a failure to communicate.- Minimize dependence on e-mail by utilizing condo management software for the sending, receiving, organization and management of internal communications within a condo corporation.
