Evergreen Lifestyle Retirement Villages – Beware their Life Rights Agreement!

After the 10 happy years my Mother spent in an Evergreen complex, it disappoints me deeply to write this negative review, but buyers need to be fully aware before signing the their LRA. If you are looking to buy into Evergreen, be VERY careful about ensuring a lawyer has gone through your concerns with you BEFORE you sign! Not ensuring this could result in you losing financially when returning the unit back to them. The bottom line is that the wording of the Evergreen LRA leaves much to be desired, where their lawyers replace the actual wording with wording to suit themselves so as to minimise what the unit holders receive as a refund, many of whom are elderly and just accept what is told to them. The following are my major points where I have proof of each, and where each point was made to the Evergreen/Amdec lawyers. Sadly, reasonableness and fairness are two words that could not be app**** to their responses: 1. Whatever the Evergreen salesperson tells you is seen as inadmissible by the Evergreen lawyers, even though the salespersons are the agents of Evergreen. Do your calculations of what you can expect as a refund BEFORE you sign and have this verified by a lawyer in conjunction with the Evergreen lawyers. In my Mother’s case, even after lengthy, detailed discussions with the salesperson who provided a totally unambiguous answer as to the Refund Calculation, Evergreen totally invalidated this. 2. When you want to sell the unit back beware of the Refurbishment Clause. Evergreen at no stage is willing to show you any details on how they calculate it! They charged my Mother nearly R55 000 where all that was required to get the unit back into a selling condition was really just a coat of paint, for which I budgeted a generous R20 000. 3. The really nasty surprise when you want to sell the unit back is the Repurchase Clause and this is where Evergreen hide behind the law by using wording to suit themselves. With the wording as it stands, and as gone through in detail with their salesperson, you lose 5% of the Purchase Price you paid when Evergreen repurchases it from you, seen as the “Repurchase Amount”. But Evergreen don’t apply this as the “Repurchase Amount” is not defined anywhere in the LRA. They take the “Repurchase Amount” to really mean the “Resale Amount” (which is also not stated or defined anywhere) and take 5% of the price your unit was actually sold for. This makes a huge difference to your expected Refund Amount. In my Mother’s case her unit sold for double what she bought it for. According to the biased LRA she not only gained absolutely nothing from the unit’s increase but then, to add insult to injury, she then had to pay the 5% on the higher sales price to the new owner instead of on the price she had paid for the unit originally. This, in effect, meant a deduction of 10% of my Mom’s Purchase Price instead of 5%, a difference of R32 500. 4. Unfortunately, disagreeing and asking for clarity and proof over a period of months from Evergreen/Amdec did not result in fairness and reasonableness in my opinion, but rather a “take it or leave it” attitude. They offered no assistance regarding Mediation and Arbitration when I raised the issue and it was made clear to me that the wording within the LRA, even if incorrect or not defined, could be app**** in the way which suited Evergreen/Amdec under Contract Law. I was simply warned that going this route would be costly to me as, in the view of the Evergreen/Amdec lawyers, there was no interpretation issue with the actual wording. Is this really how the law works in South Africa? To protect companies with deep pockets and to let them act with impunity? In hindsight, I wish I knew then what I have learned about Evergreen and Amdec. I did not which has cost my Mother. How many other elderly folk have been and are being taken advantage of? I hope that my words will be of assistance to anyone thinking of signing up with Evergreen.