Beware the Rating Cold Callers – A Cautionary Tale

As the Rating List is a public document many business are plagued by cold callers telling them that their property has not been appealed. In many cases there are good reasons for no appeal having been made.

Many of these callers are persistent and lure the managers into an instruction, sometimes on a local basis without any reference to “group”.

The following is a cautionary tale:

Due to a change in personnel a firm of consultants from Manchester ended up dealing with a property assessed at £137,000 Rateable Value (RV). This appeal caused the Valuation Office to re-inspect thus alerting them to unassessed extensions dating back to 2002.

This resulted in an increase in RV to £310,000 with certification back to 2010.

The problem is that many of these consultants have a business model whereby an appeal is made before any research is carried out.