Problems with letting agents.

Aldeney

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, I'm new. In a nutshell my husband & I have had three different letting agents over the last 2.5 years but despite being polite & treating each property well we have encountered several acts of rudeness, incompetence & indifference from all 3 agents which have resulted in us getting stressed & depressed and, on one occasion, we had to move house to escape their behaviour. None of our complaints have been taken seriously and the fact that they are all either a member of ARLA or NAEA hasn't made a scrap of difference to their lack of customer service. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had repeated problems with their letting agent and if they managed to resolve things. Thank you.

ilovemycats

If it helps... more and more landlords are shying away from letting agents. Certainly two landlords that I know (one is mine) have scrapped their letting agents completely. High %, not being contactable, not dealing with requests, those seem to be towards the top of the list.

So don't worry, you're not alone by any means. And it is resulting in agents having access to the worst properties and the worst tenants.

Partly the reason why they're so incompetent is that most of them used to be recruitment consultants.

Aldeney

Your post made me smile, thank you! Next time we have to move we will definately consider cutting out the letting agents.

Guy_Montag

I have only rented through an agent once & that was enough to put me off for life. I rent direct from the LL, & while they can be a little slow returning my deposit, generally it's a much better way to go.

The LL is much more interested in looking after his(or her) property than a letting agent. If there's water leaking out the ceiling or whatever, it's in the LL's interest to get it fixed asap.

Generali

My experience of letting agents is that they're slow, ignorant, incompetant and often liars too.

chops05

Don't get me started on my LA!! lol

SteveCat

I guess there is good and bad, I for one run my Letting Agency with pride because I can honestly say we treat everyone the same, we usually cannot do enough to help and usually have some outstanding products for Landlords and Tenants. I can also say we have never ripped anyone off but I know some that have, that inturn tars everyone else with the same brush.
I do agree though that more Landlords are going elsewhere, we charge unbeatable fee's and offer a good service but Landlords still will not use us. Experiences elsewhere have got to be a factor.

MissSunshine

Mine are worse than useless, always have to chase repairs at least three times and there's been a number of other admin issues and only lived here almost 6 months.
Couple of weeks ago I politely pointed out that whilst I appreciate the LL is their client, they also need me as a tenant in order to get their commision, funnily enough they've improved 90%!!

Because they've been so appalling and I was ready to return to work, I applied for a p/t postion with another letting agent in the town just to see how difficult the job is. I've got an accounts background and working for an LA is the easiest job I've ever done!!! and we're polite and efficient.

Kaminari_2

Our LA is great, if there is a problem they deal with it straight away. Previously we rented a flat that an EA sourced tenants for but the LL managed and they were pants. Never fixed the mouldy walls from the leaking roof and we never saw a gas safety cert. I think you get good and bad LL and good and bad LA.

digp

SteveCat wrote:

I guess there is good and bad, I for one run my Letting Agency with pride because I can honestly say we treat everyone the same, we usually cannot do enough to help and usually have some outstanding products for Landlords and Tenants. I can also say we have never ripped anyone off but I know some that have, that inturn tars everyone else with the same brush.
I do agree though that more Landlords are going elsewhere, we charge unbeatable fee's and offer a good service but Landlords still will not use us. Experiences elsewhere have got to be a factor.

the agents we use to let out our properties are very good. never had any problems with them. they're a bit more expensive, but we get good service and access to staff from abt 9ish thru to 9 pm if nec. theyre not with any associations tho.

pingu79

Our LA (a big firm) is absolutely rubbish, when we first went through application for the flat lady wrote down the wrong move-in date so other lady doing reference/checks etc hadn't requested them on time and we had to chase everyone up and basically do their job.

When we moved in we had to write our own inventory as the one they provided wasn't for our flat (a standard flat in the block) and blamed us for moving in quick, yet pretty sure flat had been empty for at least the month before.
We also realised 2 fire doors to kitchen & bedroom wouldn't close, it took 3 months before they were fixed (guy also told us he quoted for that job 4months previously). There were no curtain poles/fixings in either of the bedrooms. I know it was an unfurnished flat but not providing fixings is taking the p*ss, they did come and put some up eventually tho.

We asked back early november if we could go onto a rolling month contract as we had put in offer in house and although we contacted them again by end of november, we didn't get a reply until end of december and our contract was due to end mid jan. The most annoying thing is that they told us in jan that we have a no penalty 1 months notice in contract, now why didn't they just tell us that back in nov? grrrrr

As you can see i really hate ours, they are rude to you and incompentant at a job which is hardly taxing and you can't trust anything they say either. It really annoys me that we paid £250 for this "service". You expect that you will be better off going via an agent but the private landlords i've used were much better