Felicity J Lord

We advertised our first house initially with FJL because they were local to us at the Blackheath Standard. This was in 2005 when the property boom was in full swing and prices were quite frankly mad.

I had a set of professional photos of the house taken as we had spent a lot of money renovating it prior to sale and I was very proud of the work done. All of these were passed on to FJL. We also moved out to sell the house as vacant possession with no onward chain dropping a set of keys off with FJL as we did so.

I received a mail asking to to approve the prospectus for the house. I rejected it on the basis that there was scant mention of the fact we had re-decorated the whole house, no mention of the fact it was vacant possession or that we had installed brand new appliances and to add insult to injury, FJL had come around and taken their own photos which were dark, blurred and showed the bins in the front garden etc etc.

I heard nothing from them for a week then received a phone call from one of the female estate agents who applied massive pressure to me to drop the house price by £30k. This was despite the fact that we were asking slightly below the average price for houses in the Blackheath conservation area anyway in order to encourage a quick sale.

My husband and I discussed it and began to wonder if she was trying to buy for a friend - we could have been entirely wrong but could think of no other explanation of the behaviour we were experiencing. Whatever the reason, we considered our relationship with them at an end, once and for all. We switched to another estate agent that afternoon.

When, after many phone calls, they still did not take down their board. I stopped calling and did it myself. Wordlessly aband it in oning the wretched thing in the middle of the floor of their Blackheath Standard branch.

I would never use them again after that experience.