When Benjamin Disraeli famously outlined his damning assessment that there are "lies, damned lies and statistics" he could have replaced the word statistics with retirement village surveys.
Embattled Aveo retirement village giant and peak lobby group the Retirement Living Council have spent the past few days talking up the popularity of retirement villages and talking down allegations raised in a joint media investigation by Fairfax Media and ABC's Four Corners.
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'They will squeeze every dollar out of every resident'
Gwyneth Jones has been in a long-running battle with Aveo, but she can't move out due to the crippling fees she'd be charged.
That investigation exposed a litany of questionable business practices at Aveo including punitive fees, churning of residents, misleading marketing promises and sub-standard safety and emergency services.
Since the stories broke, I have received hundreds of emails and phone calls from long-suffering residents who have been suffering in silence due to poor regulation.
The spotlight is now firmly on a sector that is clearly crying out for reform. Not that the company or the industry is enjoying the attention. Both seem to hope the issue will just go away.
Since June 2, almost a month before the stories were published, Aveo was repeatedly asked to participate in an interview, but declined.
Instead the company has chosen to pay for full page ads in newspapers castigating the stories as one-sided.
It has also released a statement to the ASX containing answers to questions sent to them as part of the investigation. Those answers were provided to the investigation five days after a deadline the company's spokesman had committed to meet.
In a statement to the ASX it quotes as a key point of rebuttal an "independent industry survey" purporting to show 98 per cent of residents would make the same choice to live in a retirement village if they had their time over.
It was a similar message peddled by the executive director of the Retirement Living Council, the peak body for retirement village operators, when he was interviewed on ABC's Lateline earlier this week saying "surveys, conducted independently ... consistently show that over 90 per cent of residents are happy with the choice they have made."
The Retirement Living Council includes representatives from major retirement village operators including Aveo.
Even the Federal Minister for Aged Care Ken Wyatt mentioned the surveys, telling Fairfax in response to the media investigation: "While the industry advises me the majority of residents are happy, these highlighted cases are not what we want in a fair-go society."
All they seem to want is your money and nothing else.
John Hayto, Aveo resident
Nowhere do they mention how old the survey is, the number of people surveyed, how it was conducted, who paid for it and who actually did it.
After a series of detailed questions sent to Aveo this week, the company finally said: "the statement is based on industry based data as well as internal surveys undertaken by Aveo regularly with its residents and purchasers."
It still doesn't answer the pertinent questions.
Aveo says it independently conducts surveys of its villages which shows 89 per cent of residents agree they feel safe and secure in their village and 87 per cent agree that in an emergency they are confident they will receive prompt attention via the emergency button.
One Aveo staff member sees things differently. They contacted me to describe the surveys as highly questionable, saying only a fraction of residents fill them in and in one village some of those who filled them in had dementia. It is a theme echoed by residents at villages across the country who believe the surveys are flawed.
It should be said that number of current and former staff have come forward since the scandal broke saying staff care deeply for the welfare of residents but tight cost controls from head office make it increasingly difficult to do their jobs.
One said they were pressured to charge residents in 15 minute increments for any extra help such as pushing a resident in a wheelchair or delivering a tray of food if someone was too sick.
"I was told I wasn't making them enough money," one staff member said.
Aveo likes to claim its new contracts, The Aveo Way, are simpler and give residents more certainty, with a 35 per cent exit fee charged on the sale of a unit after three years.
Whatever the case it is worth noting that most of Aveo's residents are living under old contracts, which are complex and include costly refurbishments and reinstatement requirements. To put it into perspective, Aveo has a total of 11,014 units and more than 13,000 residents, and of those, 2000 have signed up to the Aveo Way contracts.
Aveo also claims in its full-page ads that it does not have a "churn target" and that it simply presents the figures of people leaving to investors.
This is despite the same turnover figure of 10 to 12 per cent, equivalent to 1200 units, being referred to as being "within target range" in ASX presentations and transcripts of calls to analysts.
It also says that in a recent Victorian Parliamentary inquiry only 22 of the almost 800 submissions came from Aveo residents. It doesn't mention that some of these submissions were submitted by groups of residents.
In its TV ads and brochures, Aveo paints itself as caring. But residents who have appeared in recent media stories don't feel it is caring.
Iris Lees who died while a resident in an Aveo retirement village. Photo: Supplied
Relatives of 93-year-old Iris Lees say Aveo never apologised to the family after she was found dead in January 2014 after opening a glass door that locked when she walked outside. The door didn't have any warning signs or an emergency buzzer or surveillance cameras. Iris Lees would spend the next few hours fighting for her life in more than 40 degrees heat.
When the story of 86-year-old John Hayto was told, where a friend, had called the Aveo front office and asked someone to check on his friend who hadn't been answering his calls, Aveo responded by saying there was no record of receiving a call.
Hayto was found by his cleaner after lying on the floor for five days without food and water or medication.
He has been in rehabilitation for seven months and he won't be well enough to return to Aveo. "All they seem to want is your money and nothing else," he says.
These are two of the horror stories about the treatment of Aveo. There are many more.
While some residents are undoubtedly happy in the villages, it is questionable how any survey can get the sort of lofty heights of 98 per cent satisfaction.