Have you all ever had a supplier refuse to use your compliance system?

Suppliers, have you all ever refused? I got weirdly looped into an email where a supplier simply said, "(Our company) does not pay an external vendor for payment. If you want a new insurance certificate please email (contact)."

Thoughts on this? What happened in your scenario?

I’d say find a new supplier.

Being in this industry for so long as a supplier, you have to meet their requirements if you want the business.

This happens to me all the time, supplies don’t want to pay for you to use their business.

Unless it's a very unique business or in some kind of remote area, new supplier!

Yes all the time. We just pay for the fee for them to join but we are in a strange area that have a lot of small businesses some dont even have the insurance required. It's one if my biggest headaches.

Courtney Deason I have never heard of managment paying the fee!

Ashley it's either that or not have an electrician, painter, roofing companies. It's easy when your in a market that has a lot of big name vendors, I'm not. It's like pulling teeth to find vendors with workmans comp

Yes as a contractor have refused work based on the fact that the process caused extended delays. Yes as an owner, I am sorry but Tiff’s Treats delivering cookies to the staff — In my opinion presented no additional risk other my staff napping after snack time.
The compliance systems and processes are beneficial. But they need to be properly administered. Secondly, there needs to be a variance process to allow for expected discrepancies in the COI process.

Yes I’ve had it happen. We find a new vendor.

We always comply, but I will say - it becomes incredibly expensive and from an invoice processing/submitting standpoint, it gets very labor intensive and with many of the compliance systems, it's a manual (yes, I said "manual") process to upload invoices. When uploading/billing for entire portfolios of individual properties, that manual work takes a LOT of time (think about having to manually invoice each resident separately and outside of your PMS system). Having worked on both sides of the industry, I understand the reason for having systems like this in place, but it can be a large financial drain on small companies. And sometimes, the cost to use those systems is more than what the management company is spending with the vendor. I often think...there has to be a better way?

It is bizarre that a property can require us to “pay” for THEIR third party system to get us paid. Imagine if we told them that?!!!
The owner-supplier relationship is strained “at best”. Prime example: “give me that for free...for 1-2-3 months” imagine that statement from a prospective renter???? Hmmm, bet that would go over like a lead balloon.
Right???

I tell the vendor to add it to the cost of doing business

We "vendors" pay $99 in every direction yearly on so many sites - it adds up regardless of how big or small you are. It seems like the money could be better spent.
Time wise - a majority of 3rd party authentication such. If I'm paying for a company to assist me show my management company that my insurance is updated and green light and it takes 72 hours to 20 days for you to confirm you recieved my snail mail, over night, fax, email or first born child there is an issue. If I'm using a service that I'm being told to use and I have to pay for it, at the very least I want that 3rd party to actually be helpful in the process and provide me good service.
I myself have never refused to join a 3rd party site - at the end of the day if you want to work with a specific company you need to follow thier set rules.
Be safe all - and remember to be nice today... we forgot how to in July 2020

I have been on the vendor side for 13 years and I would never say that to a prospect.

I am in a smaller town and vendors refusing to pay the fee is very common and has continually caused me grief in getting vendors for my community. I have very FEW vendors for my property and we do most work in house unless it require a license.

Yes we have refused before when it wasn’t as common and couldn’t justify the expense, now that is more common, we comply begrudgingly. It’s expensive and time consuming, and I’ve had it used against us for holding up payments, etc. One case was because our carrier didn’t put the fax number on the COI in the place the compliance company wanted it. Many times my office said, I can’t believe we are paying a company to treat us like this

If the playing field was equal then pay the fee. However too often properties find a favorite vendor and get them paid without the 3rd party system. It's much the same as hearing "we only do business with association members: and then they never do. Seen it over and over for 30 years

On this note, if any other vendors have a good contact with Ops technology it would be greatly appreciated. We pay them a lot to have to do a lot of work on our end. Paymode-X is also very expensive to get paid. I love working with sites that have Avid or Yardi payment. We will happily pay $99 per year for a good client with a good system but Ops and Paymode-X are not my favorites.

I would never say that to a client, but I hope that they all realize that we pay to be their business partner and a lot of the third parties save them money as it reduces their accounting head count.

I try not to use OPS because they charge per invoice ($2-$3 each). We invoice weekly because we service and pay weekly. It is cost prohibitive. But if clients force us to use the system (which is still a lot of work uploading invoices and such), we will begin passing the cost with slightly higher rates. You make us spend more, it will cost more. That's just business just like passing costs to residents. ????

I saw it all the time, it’s getting a little out of control with these 3rd part companies, most of the time as a manager, I did all the work anyway!!

Unfortunately in my experience these systems are a constant headache for everyone involved and good support is almost nonexistent.

Let me add regarding Compliance companies. I do pay the $99 fee for CD, Netvendor, RMIS etc. Netvendor and CD(now RealPage) are much easier because WE have an account with all our clients in the one account. I HATE RMIS because you have to login to EACH account that is set up separately. Sometimes my autofill resets and I don't know what the account for Fairfield, AMC or another client login is and have to dig around. Would be MUCH EASIER if they would do like CD and put all my clients in MY one account! And I have to go ADD properties in RMIS for the client just to be in compliance for that property. Why not if you are compliant for AMC, you are compliant for ALL AMC properties!!! Man I hate them...have I said that!!!

I’ve had the vendor add the fee to their first invoice.