This morning I contacted our land lord questioning our monthly bill over the latest rental bill which showed another jump in the water usage. I did not want to poke the bear too much as we have a very good monthly rental agreement which is due for an increase next month. I budget for every little thing so if something is not right questions should be asked.
Fair is fair in my book and sharing a water bill cost with other businesses is not ideal because I have no idea what those businesses even do. Our water consumption would be standard and what I would call normal with the only water being used for the toilets, tea and coffee and cleaning purposes like the floor.
The water bill this month was R24K or $1.5k and this is rather excessive and thankfully the land lords agreed. My head tells me we should be no more than R5K or $300 per month and they agreed to look into this and pass a credit for the months we have been over charged. This could be good and bad news because they could increase the rental to cover the credit so we will most likely be paying for this in an around about way. I have been around the block enough times to know how things get done and the credit may cover a full months rental for now, but over the next year we will be paying for this.
6 years ago I was asked to help found this warehouse
Next month they are moving to separate meters so at least we should have a real reading that everyone should be happy with and only then see the amount we have been over charged. The landlords know this as why would they offer to pass a credit if they have no clue what a fair monthly reading would be so they could be playing games making extra. One can never rule anything out and always assume the worst as they know we need them as there would be a host of tenants wanting the rental we pay. The rental I negotiated has to be half of what other warehouses pay as rentals have escalated alarmingly over the last 5 years. I am expecting a 6-8% increase this year and no more so we shall see what happens next month.
I know the market prices per square meter as I have been on the look out for another smaller warehouse for our upcoming production line and nothing is cheap today. This looks like the new warehouse will only be required around March or April and have been putting money one side so we are ready to jump when we are expected to start. The product is launching in February so the middle of March is when we will fully know the size of the operation required.
The good thing about this new product is it will teach myself new skills when it comes to the packaging process and who knows maybe I can find another product to cover for the times the packaging machine is not required as there will be quite a bit of down time. One has to learn to walk first when doing something totally new and I have to reel myself in and not get too far ahead of myself. Going into a new project is exciting and there is still a lot of the unknown that is going to happen that you need to take each day slowly and make sure you do things right.