Hello fellow geekzoners

After I moved to Wellington - we decided to rent first to learn about the city before purchasing a property. I have previously rented out a property in Auckland before via management company and from what I understand was they were courteous to the tenants and pleasant to deal with. It also seemed the tenants liked the place and had no issues with the company at all.

I find the current company (where I am renting) arrogant, and although within their rights, there is no negotiation of inspection time - "this is when we are going to to it and you have no say. If you are not home too bad leave comments on a paper" kind of approach. My wife is at home with our 2 year old - and generally she would like to be home for inspections. I don't really like when someone walks into our house and looks around; I don't find it pleasant at all. Their excuse is we inspect all the properties this suburb all in one day.

The landlord seems to look after the property but in aggressive way - we need new gutters, we need new blah blah and without giving us 24 hour notice, we have tradesman on the front door knocking to start work on it. The property managing company did warn that work will happen in next 1-3 months and postponed due to weather etc, but we are not kept in the loop. Once the work is done, the landlord is knocking on our door the next day wanting to inspect it. Once again without notice. This generally has been outside however.

Now we have an issue with the lawn mowing lady who called me and apologised that she couldn't come any more due to her bad hips as she finds this property one of the bigger ones that she works on. And now I receive an email from the property company saying that I wasn't maintaining the property and the lawn mowing person felt it was hard to mow the lawn as i was too long! Jesus I don't want her to lawn the mow every 2 weeks like she suggested during the spring time. I did 3 weekly, and over winter we communicated via text that 6 weekly would be fine in cold winter but become more frequent as it grows quicker. This person was recommended by the property owner as they wanted someone who knew the property to mow the lawn. I accepted that despite the price (thought not so big lawn and relatively flat section for $45 was steep).

I am just ranting a bit - as I pay my rent perfectly on time, didn't make a single hole in the wall (etc - nail) in the last 17 months we have been. I find the managing company extremely arrogant and has no respect to the tenants. Is there anything I can do to warn them formally. I would never recommend anyone to stay on current property due to the managing company mostly.

I am fuming as the first email I open is this 'you need to maintain your property' bullsh*t.

Grrrr