Whatever you're up against,build the evidence for it.
A letter or a claim about something you didn't know was a problem. Answer it with the dates as they actually were.
Something happened and nobody's fixing it. Show when it happened, how often you asked, and how long they took.
The person with the dated record is the one who can show it. One register either way, and one document at the end.
What you're building
A numbered register. Your entries on one side, theirs on the other, and the silence in between counted for you.
This is one example, and it's somebody raising it. The same register holds a noise log, a deposit argued from either side, or a claim that was refused — and it runs the same way when you're the one answering.
Two dates on every entry
The day it happened, and the day you wrote it down. Both are kept and both are printed, which is what makes the record worth handing to anyone.
- A photo brings its own date off the camera. A letter carries the day it was sent. You type neither.
- Write something up weeks late and the record says so. Anyone can type a list of dates afterwards. A record that shows when each line was written is a different thing.
- Nobody logs silence, so it's worked out. Three weeks with nothing from either side becomes a line you never had to write.
You don't get to pick which end you're on
Half of all this is somebody answering something. The register is the same either way — that isn't a compromise, it's the point. The app asks which on the first screen and then stops asking.
A letter arrived about something you didn't know was a problem
You didn't choose the timeline and you're answering somebody else's account of it. What you need is the dates as they actually were, what you sent and the day you sent it, and what you already held before any of this started.
Something happened and nobody's fixing it
What happened and when, how many times you asked, how long they took to answer. You pick the day it starts, and it can be today.
Same register, same document, same $39. Which way round is the only thing the app asks you to decide, and it asks once.
The best record you have is the one you kept for another reason
Somebody raising something has been collecting since the day it started. Somebody answering usually starts from nothing — because until the letter arrived, there was nothing to answer. That sounds like a losing position and it usually isn't one.
- A calendar you kept for work. In one of the worked examples, seven noise complaints are answered with a wall calendar in a garage — kept for no reason except knowing which job he'd done in which week. Of the four dates the first letter named, two were days he was away and no work was done at all.
- A photo roll with dates already on it. Your phone dated every picture as you took it. Photographs of a room in April, taken because you'd just finished it, are a condition record whether you meant them that way or not.
- Messages nobody deleted. In another, a friendly text sixteen months earlier mentioning that the carpet got wet mattered precisely because it was kept when it didn't matter.
None of it was a record when it was made.
It becomes one because it's dated and because somebody put it in order. That's the first hour of a case you're answering — not writing anything new, just putting what already exists somewhere it can be counted and read in sequence.
The letters come out of the same record
Eighty-four of them, both directions. You pick one, and the facts fill themselves in from your own entries — dates as you logged them, item numbers as they stand.
- The ask stays blank. BME never decides what you're asking for — not a figure, not a date, not a remedy. That part is yours, and it's left empty rather than guessed at.
- Eight of them are written for the person answering, with the reasons read off your own record. Not the complaint letters with the names swapped.
- Nothing is sent for you. You get the letter. How it goes, and whether it goes at all, stays with you.
Mark one sent and it goes back into the register as a dated item.
So the next letter counts it, the silence after it is measured from it, and the document you hand over shows it sitting there in the run of things. The letter isn't the output. The record is — and the letter goes back into it.
The thing you hand over
At some point it goes to somebody who wasn't there — an agent, an adjuster, a board, a mediator, a lawyer. What you give them is the whole of what they know about you.
- One document, your case name on the cover. It reads as your record, not an app export.
- The register in full — every entry numbered and dated, both sides, gaps counted.
- The photographs printed as numbered plates, not a list of filenames for someone else to go hunting through.
- A fingerprint for each file and a page on how to check it, so the checks can be done without us.
- A schedule of anything you're holding back, listed plainly, saying no copy was supplied.
- No summary and no conclusion. Nothing worked out on your behalf.
Open the full sample (PDF) — a fictional case, so you can read every page.
$39 once, and only for the document
Said here rather than at the end, because finding out late is what makes people distrust everything before it.
That's the price today. It may go up for new cases later — a case you've already paid for is paid, and there is nothing to renew.
- Keeping the record is free. No trial running down, nothing expiring while you're using it.
- One payment, that case, when you want the finished document. The case stays open afterwards. No renewal.
- Nothing you wrote is taken back. Decide not to pay and the record stays yours, still open to add to. Your own files come out for nothing.
What it won't do
Worth knowing before you start, since plenty of things in this corner imply otherwise.
- It won't tell you whether you're right. Every line is counted off your own records. No opinion about anyone.
- It won't decide what you're asking for. The letters fill in the facts from your record and leave the ask blank — and when it's being raised against you, they're written for the person answering, not the complaint letters with the names swapped.
- It can't fill in the days you didn't log. It counts what you wrote down, and the document says so on the page.
- It won't turn a recording into text. A recording is kept as a recording and played back from the record. No audio is sent anywhere to be read by anything.
Which one sounds like yours?
Each one opens a page on it — what to start writing down, and what the record needs to hold by the time somebody reads it. Same app underneath, same register, whichever end you're on.
It's being raised against you
You're raising it
Not sure which is yours, or it isn't here? It doesn't matter much — it's one app, and the record comes out the same shape whichever it is. Every situation we've written up, or just name yours below and start.
Want to see one finished first? The Case File is four worked examples, read end to end — and two of the four are written from the answering side.