Instead of raising hell, Avail.co ignores unpaid rents

[A. Tork]

Hello I've been with Avail.co (previously Rentalutions.com) for about a year for the marketing and management of several properties, for which I'm paying $24.95 a month. The biggest reason I started to use an online system like Avail was to have a central online method of rent collection and the recording of the collected and uncollected rents. 

I have several issues that I will write about in the future. But right now Avail's biggest flaw:  after a tenant fails to pay rent it goes into silent mode exactly when Avail should be raising hell.

Avail sends the tenants email reminders when rent and the unpaid rent late fee are due and sends me (the landlord) copies of these emails. Avail then informs me by email which tenant has not paid that month's rent. But guess what happens after that? Avail goes silent. Both the landlord and the tenant are no longer reminded of the unpaid rent. This is bizarre because this is exactly when repeated and increasingly more urgent alerts to both the delinquent tenant and the landlord are necessary. Both the tenant and landlord should be reminded at least once or more per day, ideally not just by email, but also texts and canned telephone messages.

I became of aware of this flaw recently when I was in the middle of difficult overseas travel and the ensuing recovery from jet lag and failed to realize that a tenant had not paid until the end of the month!  

Yes, I failed to pay attention; I agree. But I hired Avail to help prevent such a scenario not go silent when I'm at a disadvantage and need an assistant's constant reminders about unpaid rent.

Consider this issue from the tenant's point of view: at the beginning of the month there are plenty of canned rent-due alerts. But the tenant learns that if he/she just ignores the alerts past the late fee, the alerts go away!  It informs the tenant no one is at the helm and late rent is not that important. Why even bother to pay when the late fee has already been incurred and no one is even inquiring?

When I wrote to Avail about this flaw recently, they just thanked me for my input. As far as I know no changes have been made. 

I would love to hear the other landlords' experiences with this issue. Do you agree that this is a huge flaw in Avail's system or am I naively expecting too much? Do you know of other services that better handle this issue? 

(I hope to post about other issues. Another very annoying - but less urgent - issue: constant inactivity logouts. Does Avail think all landlords are logging in from Starbucks?) 

[Russell Brazil]

I think you are confusing what a rent payment softwares use is with the job of a property manager.