If you want to rent a flat, you might try praying ...

If you want to rent a flat, you might try praying for one, or simply laying in the street and waiting for the situation to arise, both methods would be preferable and much more profitable than dealing with Geo Hallam and Sons.

Here's why;

Unaccommodating - Geo Hallam and Sons appear to only have one member of staff able to put through an application for a flat. When asked to come in to check over the application, the time slots we were given were 10am - 2pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Great slots for people who don't have a job, unfortunately you need a job to pay rent usually...

They suggested meeting in our lunch break, which would be fine if we were directly in the centre of town, but there's no chance of taking a bus there and back in an hour, meaning I had to lose a days work (self employed) to take my partner and me there and back so she would be able to do it in her lunch.

Having bitten our tongues and arranged time off work we go in to find we may as well have not bothered, as the meeting consisted of photocopying our passports and asking, "Is this answer on your application correct?", to which we were to reply, "Yes, or else we would not have written it...?".

The meeting was arranged for 12, they were 15 minutes behind schedule.
We then found out that when we come to sign we would be restricted to a Friday only, because why not? Oh and before 5 of course.

Exactly two weeks ago today we had this meeting, they haven't even sent out any communications to our references. We haven't recieved a singly courtesy call since then to tell us how the application is going, despite us calling them (the lady in charge of lettings was not around in the day time when I called). Not even an e-mail.

This is a real shame because we were all set to move, we had met with the landlord who couldn't have been more accommodating, taking his free time to show us around the flat.

Landlords - do it yourself - they most certainly aren't earning YOU anything.

Tenants - look elsewhere - try building a house.