Lift breaking down repeatedly: document it and enforce the contract

A lift that fails every other month is not bad luck: it is a contract poorly performed. You just have to be able to prove it.

"The lift is down again." The sentence comes up at every board meeting, everyone feels it is frequent, but nobody can say how many times exactly, or since when.

Yet that is the only argument that counts with a lift company: a count. Without it the discussion goes in circles, the company speaks of "isolated incidents", and the contract rolls over for another year.

What the contract owes you, and you never read

Take the maintenance contract and look for four things, often buried in an annex.

1. The number of preventive maintenance visits per year, and their frequency.
2. The guaranteed response time for a breakdown, and the specific time when someone is trapped in the car — the two are distinct.
3. The scope of the flat fee: which parts are included, which are billed on top. That is where unexpected invoices hide.
4. Termination terms and notice period. Without that date in mind, the contract renews before you have time to seek competing offers.

The table that changes everything

One line per breakdown is enough: date and time reported, type (trapped car, door, emergency call, stopping off-level), time the technician arrived, downtime, and whether anyone was trapped.

After six months, that table produces figures nobody argues with: number of breakdowns, actual average response time against the contractual one, cumulative downtime. It is exactly the logic of the issue log, applied to a piece of equipment.

"It breaks down a lot" cannot be defended. "Eleven breakdowns in eighteen months, average response 6 h against 4 h contractual" defends itself.

Maintenance visits: the check nobody makes

The log or sheet left in the machine room after each preventive visit is rarely consulted. Compare the number of visits actually carried out with the number in the contract: the gap is common, and it is a contractual breach far easier to demonstrate than a breakdown.

Record these findings in the building maintenance log, where they will also serve the next board.

Taking action

• Send the manager a quantified record, not a complaint, asking for it to be passed to the lift company with a request for written explanation.
• Ask for competitive bidding as the term approaches: see the template quote request and the comparison grid, lift contracts being particularly hard to compare.
• Take the subject to the meeting with the figures: owners readily vote a change of provider when shown a count.
• Put all of it in the condo board annual report.

Counting without thinking about it

Keeping that count by hand rarely lasts more than three months. With CoproHarmony each reported breakdown becomes a dated issue attached to the lift; when renegotiation comes, the full list exports to PDF. Create your space for free.

When breakdowns repeat, the question changes: see modernise or replace the lift.