By Julie Manganis
SALEM — Shortly after Jacqueline Wilkins bought her Salem home 21รขÑ2 years ago, she found a coupon under her door offering $100 off a tank of oil.
She thought, "Why not? We need oil."
That coupon was no bargain.
Wilkins was horrified when she discovered she is one of nearly 150 North Shore homeowners who have liens on the titles to their homes, put there by the same home-heating oil dealer after the home-owners disputed their bills.
And many don't even know it.
The oil dealer goes by a variety of names, including Astro Fuel, Apollo Oil and Anchor Fuel, owned by Anita Davekos of Marblehead.
Davekos has been filing the liens for the past several years, said John O'Brien, register of deeds for southern Essex County.
"I've never seen anything like this," said O'Brien, who has been at the Registry since 1977 and thinks it could be a scam.
But he believes the law governing what are known as "mechanics liens" limits his ability to reject the lien applications.
"We cannot legally refuse to record these," he said. That's because the liens appear to meet the criteria for filing, he said. And his staff has no way to verify whether the information being presented by Davekos is accurate.
It's not, Wilkins said.
In the fall of 2006, Wilkins ordered oil for her two-family home. She paid with a check. She didn't use the company again.
In September, while checking at the Registry on something else, she found the lien.
"It took me awhile to remember," Wilkins said. "I used them once. I paid them once, and that was it." So she called Davekos.
Wilkins said Davekos told her that "there was a bill, so you must owe us money" — the kind of nonanswer that would frustrate Wilkins and other customers for months.
Piling on fees
Davekos then sent her a copy of a bill, which had skyrocketed to $3,500. Davekos had charged Wilkins for three tanks of oil on the same day, even though her house has just two tanks. She added back the $100 that had been taken off with the coupon, as well as late fees and interest and also claimed a $399 contract cancellation fee, though Wilkins says she never signed any contract.
Davekos is also charging homeowners a $300 filing fee for the lien application, though the Registry only charges her $75.
Then Wilkins learned that even though the lien was technically expired, she could not have it removed from her title because Davekos refused.
Under the law, a contractor who seeks a lien has to "perfect" the lien within 120 days by going to court and proving to a judge that he or she is owed the money. Davekos does not appear to have done that in any of the cases. Just two or three of the liens have been removed after homeowners paid her, Assistant Register Kim Arena said.
Legally, the Registry cannot remove the liens without the consent of Davekos.
"If the (attorney general) can show me a way, I'd go out back and throw them in a barrel and set them on fire," O'Brien said.
Davekos referred questions to her attorney, Richard Camann. He refused to comment.
O'Brien said he's suspicious of Davekos' motives in filing the liens.
"If you owe me $6,000, I'm going to go to court and get my money," O'Brien said. But Davekos doesn't follow through in court.
O'Brien thinks it's a scare tactic to get people to pay them money. "I think it's disgraceful," he said.
But lots of people don't even know the liens have been recorded, because Davekos doesn't notify them. Instead, the liens pop up when a homeowner tries to refinance or sell. And amid the stress of closing on a new home or hurrying to get a particular interest rate during a refinancing, some may be willing to pay the money.
There are other potential consequences. Liens are often picked up by credit reporting bureaus and can damage someone's credit rating.
'How can they do that?'
Al Berman, a Danvers sales executive, had no idea that Davekos had slapped a lien on his home last September, until a Salem News reporter called him last week.
He'd ordered one tank of oil from Anchor Fuel several years ago, he said.
"I know we had a dispute," he said. "I terminated them, and they filled it again."
After some back-and-forth over the bill, he heard nothing more and assumed they'd dropped it.
"It's very upsetting," he said after learning about the lien. "How can they do that without me knowing?"
Boris Vulikh of Swampscott learned about the lien on his home from Wilkins a few months ago. He had agreed to let the company do a "free" inspection of his burner and agreed to let them replace a pipe, even though the burner was new.
Then he started getting bills. Davekos sent him a bill for more than $500 for three plumbers who supposedly spent four hours in his home working on his burner. Each bill would include a $49 late fee. In June, Davekos filed a lien for $2,528.
"This is not acceptable at all," Vulikh said.
Cara Dranow of Marblehead couldn't pass up a chance to buy oil at 99 cents a gallon a couple of years ago. She was strapped for cash after her divorce.
She prepaid for the oil. Then she got a call at work one day. "Your tank is blown, and you need to buy a new tank," she recalls being told.
A careless employee of Apollo Oil had somehow filled her tank with air, she learned. The tank could no longer be used safely to hold oil.
The next day, Apollo showed up and filled the compromised tank. When she called to complain, Davekos told her, "Oh, yes, I know, but you can use it." Dranow refused to pay, and after a few months the bills stopped.
"I said, 'Oh, they forgot about it.'"
They hadn't. She learned from Wilkins last fall about the lien for $6,214.
The liens are for thousands of dollars more than the original bills that were disputed by the homeowners.
Problems in the past
The company has a checkered history with regulators. In 2005, the attorney general threatened legal action after consumers complained that their fixed- or capped-price oil contracts were not being honored.
Last October, the company paid an $11,500 penalty to settle a complaint by the Department of Environmental Protection that a 15-gallon oil spill during a delivery in Salem was not reported, as required by law.
Wilkins hopes the attorney general will take action again to help her and other homeowners. She has also written to local legislators about changing the law to give homeowners some recourse.
"This is ridiculous," she said, "and something needs to be done."
Where to find help
If you have done business with Astro, Apollo or Anchor and want to know if you have a lien on your home, you can search the Southern Essex Registry of Deeds online at www.salemdeeds.com or call the Registry's customer service department at 978-542-1704.
If you discover a lien and believe it was wrongly placed on your home, you can call the attorney general's consumer hot line at 617-727-8400.
