A primer on the role of the customer in a free market might seem more appropriate in a Marketing 101 class than as the topic of a newspaper column, but there is a problem that has reached critical proportions in San Diego’s office leasing market.

Many building owners and property managers have forgotten or chosen to ignore the very reason they exist — to treat their tenants as the valuable customers they are. As in any business, it is the tenant who is the customer driving the market, not the landlord.

Sadly, we find the exact opposite situation in today’s San Diego office market, where too many landlords are treating thousands of San Diego businesses and organizations that lease office space as hired help and worse. Office building owners need to return to the basics of serving their customers in order to preserve the prosperity that has characterized the market in recent years. Rather than fretting about upward interest rates and Wall Street’s disdain for investing in new office projects, building owners can help ensure a continuing strong office market for San Diego by concentrating on better serving their customers.

Space constraints prevent a complete accounting of all the abuses tenants suffer at the hands of many local building owners and managers, but a list of the more common ills can illustrate the problem:

Relocation rights.

In too many instances, unwary tenants have signed leases that allow landlords to relocate them if the space is needed for another user and to cancel the lease outright in the event the landlord cannot provide the impacted tenant with space elsewhere. Landlords who need to relocate a tenant should be required to pay for the tenant’s relocation costs and provide equal if not better space before requiring a tenant in good standing to move.

Operating expense charge-backs.

Again, there are far too many instances in which landlords are slipping baseball and football tickets, ski trips, wine and cigars into operating expenses that are charged back to lessees. Office leases should carefully specify the appropriate expenses that can be charged back to lessees in order to provide tenants with legal remedies in the event charge-backs are abused.

Tenant-improvement allowances.

Many landlords no longer feel any obligation to provide even a modest tenant-improvement allowance for previously occupied spaces. Several years ago, landlords were allowing up to $40 per square foot to build out new office space and were leasing that space for about $1.50 a foot. Today, landlords are getting $2.65 per foot for that same space and offering no allowances to modify the space for a new tenant or even to freshen up the decor.

Options to renew.

Many tenants who don’t know any better are signing leases that tie options to renew to escalator clauses in those leases. What results is the possibility, if not the likelihood, that the tenant will pay a rate higher than the market rate if he chooses to exercise the lease renewal option. Tenants need adequate protection against paying artificially inflated leasing rates created by escalator clauses in existing office leases.

Parking rates.

Too often, tenants are taking space in office buildings with a set monthly parking rate only to find that landlords will later bump up the rates when the building is at full occupancy in order to squeeze out those who are unwilling or unable to pay the higher monthly fees. Again, leases need to be written to protect tenants from unscheduled increases in parking fees.

Building management.

This is one of my chief pet peeves. It is amazing that so many building managers are getting away with providing little or no service to their customers, the office tenants. As just one example, in our building, considered one of the nicest Class A high rises in downtown, a tenant can call the management firm literally dozens of times to report a problem and not be given the courtesy of a response. Aside from repeated failures to fix problems, even the ongoing cleaning service is minimal at best. The deferred maintenance is becoming extreme. Again, this is not an isolated example. Landlords need to hold their property-management firms accountable to provide the services that their tenants are paying for each month.

In any state of the market, there is never a reason for landlords to try to prosper at the expense of their customers. Landlords deserve an honest and fair return on their buildings — and tenants deserve, at the very least, a level playing field that provides them with fair and equitable lease terms.

Tenant loyalty will become a valuable commodity to landlords when a future economic downturn inevitably creates empty office suites and more choices for tenants. Tenants who are being abused will likely remember and act accordingly. This is a very cyclical industry.

Some tenants who feel pillaged by landlords are often driven to build their own office buildings, thereby creating additional office inventory on the market. Only the fact that it takes 18 to 36 months to acquire a site, obtain approvals and build an office building prevents this from being a larger threat to existing building owners.

The better solution to an economic downturn that creates higher vacancy rates and tenants who build their own office buildings is for landlords to return to the basics of good customer service and treat their tenants as if their livelihood depended on it.

Because it does.