Unite accommodation

sammyjammy

yorkshirebird wrote: »

hey, I live with unite in sheffield, i also work for them part time, and I must say I think the 51 week contract thing must depend on the site in question as wher I live everyone is on a 44 week contract. Unite are a big company and their accomodation is in excellent locations. I think the best thing you can do is ring up as although they are owne by one company, each site in each city is run by a team of different people.

Is that because the Sheffield ones are rented out to foreign students over the summer though? There are some that I pass on the way to work and in the summer they are full of chinese students, I guess that wouldn't be the case elsewhere though.

yorks808

I used to live in student halls in Liverpool when I was at uni there. Didnt stay in unite halls as they were a bit expensive! I stayed in halls owned by Cosmopolitan. They were ok, about average and a bit cheaper!

Amanda65

Just to give a different perspective, DD1 has just moved out of her first years accommodation with Unite at Curzon Gateway in Birmingham and had a really good experience - in fact her and her friends are booked in again next year!

She was on a 43 week contract and didn't have any problems at all and the reception staff have been great. We checked out last week and as we had noted all the marks etc. carefully when she checked in have received notification that there is nothing more to pay.

I'm sure some people have had not good experiences but wanted to say that it can depend on where you are, as with everything

charcon17

Hi, i am new to all this but i found this thread and i am hoping that somebody is able to help me or give some advice..i lived in unite halls in manchester for 09/10 term and i would say to anybody to avoid at all costs!!
1) The 1st night of my stay i got into bed and immediately fell right through it!! (funny image looking back but not at the time lol), when i lefted the matteress the hardboard panel underneath was totally broke in half, not due to my weight may i add lol..but i reported this first thing the next morning but took over a week for them to fix and had to spend my 1st week sleeping on my matteress on the floor!
2) another issue i had was that the handle on my window was broken and when living in a rather rough area (like most of unites properties) and on the 1st floor its hardly ideal, again this was reported in the 1st week in sept but not fixed unil april even after a number of complaints!!
3)i noticed that every time i walke into my bathroom the lino floor seemed to have a sinking sensation and when somebody came to look at it they said they found no problem other that the door strip that i had cut my foot open on and then left with nothing more to say about the sinking!
4)i plodded on and paid 2 installments in full in oct and jan, then one night i was looking for something and pulled out my draws to find a zip up plastic bag of 200+ green pills stashed behind them!!! i went to the office in person the next day to complain and after months of taking their time about everything else as soon as i mentioned the suspicious pills they managed to have someone round at my flat within half an hour, i wanted to keep hold of them but the man who came said he would look after it all for me so i (stupidly) let him..he came back a week later to tell me they had been tested and were "herbal remedies", now im now expert but im pretty sure u dont those in such huge quantities and stash them behind draws by this tie my floor was caving in so i asked him to look while he was there and he said that it had totally collapsed under the lino!! he said that combined with the pills obviously being a result of the room not being cleaned properly before me checkng in, and everything else that had gone wrong he admitted that i shouldnt have been allowed to even move in with it in this condition and told me it was unsafe for me to stay in there any longer and i should move out right away. they offered me another flat in the building but while i had finished my exams i didnt want to even stay there any longer so moved home!

i didnt ask for anything from unite for my inconvenience other than they just let me pay for the weeks i stayed in the final ter which was around 6/7 weeks so i paid them £800 leaving £725 outstanding for the remainder that i was unable to live there.
We have wrote letters, emails and make calls trying to resolve this, they have LIED sayin i never reported any issues and then said that others had been completed when they hadnt or completed alot sooner than they actually were! they have now passed on the outstanding balance to a debt agency and dont know what to do from here ..i thought paying for the weeks i stayed was reaonsable giving all the problems i had!?! im sorry this story is so long but if anyone has any advice for me it would be sooo appreciated..thank you xx

uniteisshit

just don't, I lived there last year and couldn't afford the deposit to move somewhere else, so had to carry my deposit over to stay again this year, which I wasn't happy about anyway but this year has already been hugely disappointing and I do not feel valued as a customer in the slightest.
Since moving in our flat has had an issue with almost everything and absolutely nothing has happened to better it. Our hoover has never worked we have repeatedly asked them to fix it or give us a new one, and now it has just completely disappeared.
Our fire door doesn't shut and they clearly have no intention of fixing this. The smoke detectors stopped working, so they came into our flat and rooms without warning and dumped temporary ones on top of our wardrobes, and in the kitchen, which would not stop making noises.
My tap and window are both ridiculously stiff, my room wasn't cleaned or checked before moving in.
I'VE SAVED THE WORST TIL LAST. Lavae and beetles everywhere, since we moved in. I have been to reception 3 times now and they keep saying it will be sorted ''tomorrow'' but they won't give me a time, i have basically been told to stay somewhere else, and they didn't offer me any kind of explination to what will be done about it. I'm paying 112 quid a week to live in Leeds unite and it's disgusting. NEVER RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE.

The_Jakal

I wouldn't touch most private student halls with a barge pole!

00ec25

uniteisshit wrote: »

I'VE SAVED THE WORST TIL LAST. Lavae and beetles everywhere, since we moved in. I have been to reception 3 times now and they keep saying it will be sorted ''tomorrow'' but they won't give me a time, i have basically been told to stay somewhere else, and they didn't offer me any kind of explination to what will be done about it. I'm paying 112 quid a week to live in Leeds unite and it's disgusting. NEVER RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE.

you ahve at least 2 options open to you

1. you contact the Environmental health Dept for the council in which the property is situated and explain your probelms. An EHO has the legal power to force a halls manager to fix problems

and/or

2. Under the Housing Act student accommodation would have had to pay huge licence fees to the local council, to avoid this the legislation allowed halls managers to subscribe to a Code of Practice which is a set of commitments that the halls must meet, Included in this is a very formal complaints procedure which ultimately leads to a Govt dept called the Office of the Independent Adjudicator who also has legal powers

Unite is under the ANUK code - see the website below
http://www.nationalcode.org/
every property in England that they operate will be listed here so check the address list, find your hall and then make a formal complaint (in writing, not text) clearly stating that it is a complaint under the code. They have to respond to this or they will lose theyr accreditation and could face huge costs in having to comply with the Housing Act so they do take these very seriously
look up the procedure in the code http://www.nationalcode.org/Upload/File/NationalCode_Private.pdf that you must follow when you complain to Unite, then when that has been exhausted you then make a complaint to the code adminsitrator itself - see below
http://www.nationalcode.org/Feeds.aspx?FeedType=Box&Key=f5aa9f52-c131-4483-b619-51fd1d0ed8de
that said you will still have a fight but the odds favour the student and if you get to the OIA then compensation awards can be generous


(note if you are in a University managed property then many unis subscribe to a different code operated by the UUK - details here http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/PolicyAndResearch/Guidance/AccommodationCodeofPractice/Pages/default.aspx

yevsk

Avoid Unite at all costs. Let me share the experience of my friend who chose to live in a Unite building in her first year of study.

She decided to pay for a room in a Unite building for two main reasons: the location of one of their buildings was right next to her place of study and she also liked the idea of having bills etc. included in the price so that she could plan a budget for herself for the calendar year, or so she thought.

Before she left home, Unite called her every few days after she had registered her details on their website. She said the people who called were very friendly but she also got a definite hard sell from them (always being told that only a couple of rooms were left etc.).

Having visited her a few times at that place, I can tell you the rooms were substandard to say the very least. Everything is the cheapest of the cheap. The chair in her room was already coming apart after a few month's use (and she's by no means a big girl). The building's internal walls were so thin that if someone in any adjacent room so much as broke wind you would hear it as if they were in the room with you. You really have to think about how it would be to live with that little privacy.

But in my opinion it is not the quality of the buildings that are Unite's crime. It is the prices they charge for them and the complete lack of customer service. In the building my friend was in, the employees not only ignored the complaints of residents (which were many, given the problems that constantly arose in a huge building of such poor quality) but were willfully ignorant to them and treated them with contempt. This is such a far cry from the friendly sales people who call to close the sales at the beginning of the year, and it serves to highlight where Unite's priorities lie.

My friend also had to buy a dongle and thereafter pay for monthly data allowance (significant increase in monthly costs) because the quality of the internet connection (supposedly included in the price of the room) rendered it unusable. It was so slow that my friend could not use it to access ebooks on her university's website.

To add insult to injury, Unite will do everything they can to keep residents' deposits. My friend was charged for repairs to many things in her room that were already broken when she moved in (a cracked light switch and a window that didn't close fully for the whole year - she gave up complaining about the latter after a few months). She was also charged £70 for the budget chair that retails for £15, and she was charged for "breakages" in the communal area.

That last point is worth highlighting. Much of Unite accommodation is in the format of shared apartments: you have a room (possibly ensuite) that is one of many (typically 3-6) in an apartment. So there will be a shared kitchen/living room area and at the end of the year you will pay out of your deposit for a share of anything that Unite deems to have been "broken" in this area.

And let me use an example from my friend's experience to show how Unite abuse this system: the curtains in the shared area of the apartment were deemed to have been "damaged". Apparently the curtains were, of course, of the lowest possible quality and had frayed at the ends in the course of opening and closing them for 8 months. The cost of replacing these two small lengths of plain beige material? Twenty pounds per person. One hundred and forty pounds for a pair of budget curtains. Another charge included a hairline crack in a wall that had been caused by the people in the neighboring apartment slamming their front door.

So the point is that you must assume that your deposit will not be repaid when you leave. A deposit of £250 represents a large proportion of a student's budget and my friend was left with no money during the summer holidays. It is shameful that Unite exploits students (who are for the most part very vulnerable and naive when it comes to money) in this way.