4 years ago
First time letting through an agency, from signifi...
First time letting through an agency, from significant damage in the flat not being in the inventory report to complete lack of communication with me and my partner, I can say that so far this has been a dreadful and worrying experience.
To our absolute shock, we were charged for the flat for 12 days prior to our actual date of receiving access to the property (even though the property was not taken off the market until the day we gained access).
This was all justified by Justin Lloyd s under the pretence that because there was a delay in our referencing, we should be charged for that delay and not the landlord (who had no tenant at that point or contract with us).
At no point was it communicated to us during the process of our referencing or at any stage after, that we would have to compensate the landlord for any delay in referencing and to be quite frank, it seemed that these guys were in no rush to help us get in quicker.
I found that every time, we seemed to be the ones getting in contact with them to push the process forward and check on the status of our move. Nobody seemed to really care at all and we were misadvised multiple times causing even more delays to the process (which ofcourse was out of our pocket without our knowledge).
I believe that there was sufficient time and opportunity for them as a letting agency to make it clear that during that time of referencing, we were being charged.
6 pages down on our online contract, it says in small writing that our tenancy would begin on a date that was retrospective to our actual move in date.
Read your contracts guys, you never know what they could be doing to you. We were just so excited to get in.
You would assume that being first timers in this they would have some compassion and at least the decency to let you know. But no. Of course. They d rather it was your money, not theirs.
With a legally binding contract there isn t much you can really do but make sure your situation is public, that people know your story. To prevent them making make the same mistakes and from being taken advantage of.
We paid the compensation and hopefully that is the end of our nightmare start to what was meant to be a bright future living in our first flat together.
I would advise you, look elsewhere guys. There s plenty of other letting agency s out there who will treat you right and with a positive attitude always. A few times I ve had some real attitude honestly and that s the last thing a landlord will want to hear is that people are being scared away from letting their properties by bad telephone manner, organisation and customer service.
Johnathan and Hannah on the other hand are good at what they do, have always been polite and calm and managed to answer any questions I ve had with honesty and professionalism.
Just a shame really, we were really excited about this move. So happy. Now we feel under valued and to be honest just taken advantage of.
Let s hope in the future this can help us and other tenants receive better treatment and communication.