Accountants charge for registered office facilities?

[Lucan Unlordly]

.as per title, is this normal practice? A £300 bill for such is new to me?

 

[DontAsk]

I would say it's normal. They'll charge for any add on services, unless it was part of your original contract/letter of engagement.

As to the cost...?

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Does that include forwarding mail etc

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

.as per title, is this normal practice? A £300 bill for such is new to me?

I'd say it's fairly normal and reasonable for accountants to charge for that as a service. I assume at that price it includes forwarding mail?

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

It's not a charge that's been levied on me for over 17 years and in that time I've probably had no more than half a dozen forwarded letters including spam mail!

 

[DWS]

It's not a charge that's been levied on me for over 17 years and in that time I've probably had no more than half a dozen forwarded letters including spam mail!

Did the Accountant not contact you to say that they were now going to charge for the service?

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

Did the Accountant not contact you to say that they were now going to charge for the service?

No. Now part of a large group so personal communication is reduced.

 

[DWS]

No. Now part of a large group so personal communication is reduced.

I would have thought that if they were going to start charging for a service that was previously supplied for free then they have a duty to notify you beforehand, they should have contacted you to say that they are now charging for this service and give you the opportunity to change the registered address if you so wished.
I am not saying they are wrong to charge but they should have informed you first of their intentions.

 

[UK Contractor Accountant]

cancel service and shop around - see below extract from web search

Registered Office Address Service​

A UK Registered Office Address for just £19 p/a

This service will also forward any Statutory Mail (mail from HMRC & Companies House) sent to the Company, free of charge.

Want to use our address for the Director(s) of the Company as well? If Yes; you will also need a Directors Service Address facility which is priced at £19 (+vat) per Director, per Company, per year; this service is listed separately. (For convenience, our Companies House Package and our Ltd Company Package both include this service as part of the package).

 

[DontAsk]

It's not a charge that's been levied on me for over 17 years and in that time I've probably had no more than half a dozen forwarded letters including spam mail!

Give them both barrels. You have an implied contract and have not been notified of any changes.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

All points noted and taken on board but I'm mindful of a comment made when I started out in business 'don't think about what it costs you, think how much we save you'. In that respect I've always been happy, as have others who I've recommended them to.

I don't want any Tariffs added

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

A £300 bill

One assumes per year!

I pay about £60 for RO and directors service address in London. Official post emailed. Non official additional cost.

 

[xjr13m]

I pay my accountant £50 per year for RO and directors service address useage without mail forwarding. £300 sounds a lot even if mail forwarding is included (asuming they aren't receiving torrents of mail...)

 

[Karimbo]

There are registered address services out there who will be cheaper. They will be more efficient and scanning and emailing you, and/or forwarding letters to you. But they have 10,000+ businesses registered to the same address and you could have your business tainted by them. Clients can google your address and find news articles about scams. There was one address I used to use when I first set up and if you googled the address there were articles about fruadulent companies operating out of there.

Though in recent years the companies have done KYC checks on all the registered companies and have been better about hosting ****** scam outfits and call center scams from the addresses.

There is one risk I have to open your eyes to. My first business (pre-lockdown business) was an AV equipment hire for events. I had two instances where people would try to hire expensive equipment from me using a cloned website of an existing company that was using a registered address. Theyd have the orders sent to the registered address of the company and I presume the scammers will be outside appearing like they are on a smoke break and try and intercept the delivery. Or get the items delivered to the address and go into the registered address with fake ID and try and pick up deliveries from there.

Ever since that scam attempt I have been very wary of using registered address services.

 

[Karimbo]

my biggest worry with registered address service is some unscrupulus lender giving out finance/business credit cards to the registered address, and the mail being intercepted.

The registered address would be a nice honeypot for scammers to target, if the registered address is not strict and allows collect mail, they could easily be targeted.