PICA Property & Financial Services

If I could leave zero stars, I would. Dishonest, untrustworthy, and bullying — those are just a few words that come to mind. Hidden costs, confusing fine print, and tactics clearly designed to mislead and obfuscate. It's no surprise Four Corners did an exposé on them — the warning signs are real. This is a Strata Management company where managers… Read more

openly speak negatively about individual owners to others. They talk down to people, show a complete lack of professionalism, and if you dare to question them, they retaliate with threats of legal action.

If you're considering engaging them, be prepared — you may well find yourself at NCAT, QCAT, or VCAT.

BEWARE: Do your due diligence. Find out who else they own — including debt collection agencies and other strata companies. It’s a tangled web, and you’ll want to know exactly who you’re really dealing with.

Why do I have to give this incompetent outfit one star? PICA/Body Corporate Services is only interested in using it clients as commodities. BCS uses its own brokerage firm to get insurance, so who knows if there are cheaper alternatives out there. BCS uses its own debt collection agency to recover outstanding debts, not put out to tender. … Read more

There may be cheaper alternatives but we'll never know. PICA is owned by Fexco a company registered in the Irish Republic, a well know tax haven. This mob is unreliable and totally untrustworthy, PICA doesn't see its customers as clients but as commodities to sheduffled around its various corporate identies at its clients expense and PICA/FEXCO's advantage.

We moved away from BCS (owned by the PICA Group) and would not recommend them for the following reasons, 1. We couldn't find any value in their service i.e actually lack of responsiveness. 2. Their fees are so high and can't be justified. 3. Would take days and a number of emails before we could get a response. 4. If we didn't use their… Read more

tradespeople , they wouldn't issue a work order, the committee had to engage the tradeperson ( this isd because PICA would not receive kickbacks) but they would pay the tradie. This is all about control, so we were not in control of our account. 5. They would not provide bank statements or account numbers. ( They would just provide the autogenerated report every month and charge for it.)

Now we are at Fair Trading because they haven't handed over bank statements to the new strata company, so we can reconcile our account. We need to check what fees we have been charged and if they correspond to the contract. We will wait for a response, from FT, and if they don't cooperate we will be off to NCAT.

And have you read the CEO's comments about the insurance commissions. He states that if they don't get it, fees will need to rise further. Hello, how about you restructure to improve your efficiency and your returns. How about that, must be a novel idea for someone whose business strategy is to "milk" strata owners for as much as you can.

I don't have an office credit or debit card and thus cannot order a s184 Levies certificate using Pica Group website as they do not have a BPay or Bank potion for payment. All my emails seeking an invoice so I can pay for the certificate and my complaints are either dealt with in perfunctory manner with no result or are simply ignored. Similarly… Read more

with any Strata Managers who use Pica for payments. I keep running up against this with Pica and find them absolutely appalling to use and/or communicate with.

I have sent an invoice to them, as ive allways done to all of my over 10k customers in 22 years in my busness . It took 7 phone calls , 2 emails in 8 days to get paid , we operate as a COD busness and there are the realestate/strata sector that are on a different planet for processing payments , what a joke . Sending my 2nd ever invoice to them… Read more

again and they replyed with a huge pre programed responce of why my invoive wil NOT be paid so i try and call them with no luck . I will never do work in the future if it involves this company !

Slow responce – Long hold times and bad at callbacks not to mention poor email response times

Worst strata management and keeps getting worse! – Agree with other comments where rated poorly. Was so much better 20yrs ago. Since they've moved to BCS/PICA, it's tanked even more. Communication is so poor, strata managers don't call you back, constant revolving door of strata managers which gives you an indication of the management, leadership, culture and work conditions. Staff can't follow… Read more

simple instructions, takes 5 people to handle the one simple task and they think we're all idiots when they try and patronise you.

Strata managers also have no understanding of the history of the building or scheme because you get palmed off from one manager to the next with no accountability from anyone.

New strata managers (we're about to go on to our third strata manager now in the space of a couple of months) jump into things blindly, make incorrect comments and assumptions without informing themselves first of the situation/history or even taking the time to meet new owners or to even call owners back.

It's bad enough that you have owners in your scheme who are lazy, ignorant and clearly do the wrong things by the scheme and by other owners but to have a strata manager indulge and perpetuate the poor behaviours from problem owners and allow problem owners to expose other owners and the scheme to more unnecessary risks is unproductive.

Our previous strata manager was the best, Sara Sause, but even she left after 18months and I don't blame her. It took ages for Sommerville to even make the announcement of her departure, which demonstrates how they treat owners, and a testament to the poor communication from Sommerville BCS/PICA.

We've had a sample of what the new management of our scheme will be like and that's enough to run and cut your losses.

Sommerville, now under BCS/PICA keep getting worse and worse. Save yourselves the hassle and stress and go somewhere else where the strata manager and management actually care about you as individuals and not as their next pay cheque. Otherwise, you might as well manage your own scheme and save the significant management fees.

For us, that level of attention, proactiveness, understanding, due diligence, care and dedication went out the door when Sara left.

Disgraceful – Worst service team ever. No help at all. Causing me nothing but dramas. Un australian no help in times of need

Horrible, horrible, horrible – BCS Gosford- It appears that they are having people write them 5 star reviews. They think this will save them from the sword after the findings of the government enquiry are released. All the reviews were published 2 weeks ago. Surprising NOT.

Unfunctional property management Very poorly ranned company, beware of there lies – Unfunctional have no idea of there performance, Don’t communicate properly, and lie to clients & they a Happy to rip you off, not caring about misfortune disabled people, it is understood it’s about the money not service we payed for, Shame shame on this group, if you got questions get my number from Steven swan or Liz dee simple,

Just another non legislated level – Useless "assistance" for Strata Manager at great expense to Owners who were not asked if we agreed to this extra "service". They will not provide cost of individual item breakdown to Strata Owners. Sounds like the new Strata Community Association for members only, ie Strata Managers - not Owners

Fourth Rate Bunch of Clowns – More than 4 months later and PICA can’t even manage to update a simple change of ownership of a unit I sold despite getting the Section 22 3 times. No response to several direct complaints so I had to make a complaint to NSW Fair Trading to get them off my back. PICA are a useless bunch of clowns and under no circumstances use them if you can possibly avoid it.

PICA not recommended for strata – the basic services of secretarial, treasurer and chairman duties they are paid agreed fees for are very below basic standards. they charge extras at very high rates without approval and with no transparency, with little or no apparent benefit to owners. beware...

Run for the hills – Wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone Too many paper shuffling pretenders who feel entitled to sit back do nothing and then charge you for their service ….what service ?? Total joke of a company

Medaling and complicating contractors – PICA is responsible for our long time garden contractor quitting because recently they required him to complete more forms to complete. He has all the relevant insurance and current ABN number. They won't approve payment for plumbing unless the plumber fills in an ATO form after many forms and emails so the plumber is removing the water pressure… Read more

attachment that he installed. PICA overcomplicate things and don't seem to realize that tradesmen are not all sitting in an office looking at emails and completing forms.

A group of disgusting vipers and blood suckers on poor and weak – PICA as a whole group is absolutely vipers and blood suckers. Their preferred prey are poor and weak group. They pursuing money and blood especially on the poor and weak. As they are easy to prey.

Overall rather poor? – I foolishly lodged a request with this agency for permission to remove the 20 plus-year-old carpets in my unit and replace them with vinyl flooring along with sound deadening underlay. That lodgement occurred on the 6th of June and I'm still waiting for someone from their office to come back to me with a decision. Yep I know there is a bug… Read more

floating around causing all sorts of problems with gatherings and meetings. Yet, even I have managed to carry on with my daily meetings using either Zoom, Teams, or Skype. A decision could have been made weeks, or a month ago, using any one of these non-contact online meeting alternatives. So, because of their inability to make a decision, my apartment sat empty for weeks. Not funny, the bills kept rolling in including the strata management fee, or should that be the 'mismanagement fee'? So much for trying to do the right thing and following procedures and strata by-laws. I guess this is why some apartment owners just arrange upgrades and repairs without strata approval. In hindsight, that is what I should have done. They have cost me dearly.

Thank you BCS Strata – Having dealt with several different strata companies over the past decade & a bit in real estate, it stands to show the value of a strata manager / team who will work with agents towards the best outcome for their clients. Furthermore, taking the time to explain what they don't teach us in real estate school allows us to work better together. I… Read more

value their advice & assistance over the years namely the team at BCS Gosford where I operated for 6 years dealing with various managers in the time. Thank you!!

Very disappointed with this body corporate services. Not recommended! – From neighbors apartment water is still leaking to our unit over 2 weeks now. Our subfloor and the carpet are fully wet and now stinks. The body corporate manager said: Unfortunately, I would not be able to assist you further as the Carpet drying/restoration will be not covered under our policy. The subfloor requires drying as a result of this… Read more

event, and the body corporate policy should respond. Also, we have followed up on plumbers report with the assessor and apparently there is nothing in there about our unit even though the plumber came to our unit and recorded pictures to his tablet. Nobody inspected our subfloor for the water damaged, only the carpet. They only said the carpet is not their responsibility and did not include our unit in their insurance cover. But under the carpet is the subfloor that needs to be dried and cleaned. We are going to write a complaint to higher authorities to take action.