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Laggage check: Gateway tenants say management holding rent checks to scam late fees

Photo by Donna F. Aceto Gateway resident Nancy Chambers — a.k.a. The Parrot Lady — holds a copy of a rent check she said she mailed on Oct. 1 along with several other bill payments, but it wasn’t deposited until Oct. 12, nearly a week after all the other checks had cleared. So she’s crying fowl over the late fee she was charged.
Photo by Donna F. Aceto
Gateway resident Nancy Chambers — a.k.a. The Parrot Lady — holds a copy of a rent check she said she mailed on Oct. 1 along with several other bill payments, but it wasn’t deposited until Oct. 12, nearly a week after all the other checks had cleared. So she’s crying fowl over the late fee she was charged.

BY COLIN MIXSON

Tenants at Gateway Plaza in Battery Park City have been charged fraudulent late fees for rent checks sent on time, in an alleged scam or crime of negligence that could see the buildings’ management facing a class-action lawsuit, according to a pair of Battery Park City legal eagles.

“These claims are 100-percent true,” said William Aronin, a partner in the Battery Park City legal outfit Perry and Aronin. “We are currently considering a number of actions to fix this problem. A lot of people have come to us with it.”

Gateway Residential Management officially considers any rent payment received after the first of the month to be late, but tenants have a 10-day grace period built into their lease, so that any rent checks received before the 10th cannot be punished with a late fee, according to Gateway spokeswoman Brooke Shaughnessy.

However, complaints received by Aronin and his partner Ken Perry tell a different story, with residents claiming that the management company routinely levels $100 late fees for checks sent on time.

Nancy Chambers, a 73-year-old, long-time Gateway resident living on a tight budget, keeps meticulous logs of both when her checks are sent and when they’re deposited, she said.

She was charged a late fee last month on a check she claims she sent on Oct. 1 along with a stack of other checks for various bills, all of which were deposited on either the fifth, sixth, or seventh of the month — except her rent check, which wasn’t deposited until Oct. 12, she explained.

“We’re two seniors and we have very little money, so I keep a really, really tight ship as far as money goes,” Chambers said. “If the other checks didn’t go much further, but got there on the fifth, sixth, and seventh, why wouldn’t this one?”

Gateway uses a lockbox service contracted through KLIK that receives and deposits rent checks on behalf of management, according to Shaughnessy. Tenants mail their rent checks to a post office box managed by KLIK, not Gateway’s management office, thus precluding any shenanigans on the landlord’s part, such as mishandling the checks or intentionally withholding them, she said.

Shaughnessy admitted that the contractor does not keep a log of when the checks are actually received, but contends that it deposits checks either the day they’re received, or the day after.

Despite the involvement of an accredited third-party check handler, the sheer volume of complaints the lawyers have received from aggrieved Gateway tenants shows that management is up to no good, according to Perry.

“The problem is how many people have so many problems,” Perry said. “You’re allowed to trust a third party contractor, until you have enough reasons to know you can’t trust them.”

The Gateway Plaza Tenants Association has also received similar complaints from tenants about late fees, but is less willing to jump to the conclusion of wrongdoing, according to the group’s president.

“We’re aware of some complaints that have come our way and we’re assessing it,” said association president Glenn Plaskin.