“I cannot express enough how awful my experience has been ......”
1 Star Review
Mar 28,2012
By:
'Adam'
Mar 28,2012
Branch: London, 310 Mare Street
Services: Lettings (as a Tenant)
Would you recommend?: No
Postcode:
Branch: London, 310 Mare Street
Lettings (as a Tenant)
Postcode:
32
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this helpful
I cannot express enough how awful my experience has been with Felicity J Lord. From the day we were meant to move in up till now 9 months later there has been nothing but problems and any attempt at getting resolutions is like getting blood out of a stone. Any kind of communication or action from them is non-existent.
We agreed to rent our flat 9 months ago. We said on the Tuesday we would be coming to collect the keys and pay the rent/ sign the lease on the Saturday ready to move all our things. They said this would be no problem at all. Our van comes and we load up and drive to Felicity J Lord. On arrival they say that actually the contract is not ready and they have to chase up their secretary who apparently won't have it ready for a couple of hours. They also tell us that although they didn't say before, 1 of my flatmates needed a guarantor but they should be able to give us the keys and let us move our stuff in if we can get the details later. They also say that they need a reference for us but that a reference from our previous landlord would be fine. We rush off and track down our previous landlord to get a reference and my flatmates gets the details for his guarantor. We get back to Felicity J Lord a couple of hours later and they say all the paperwork is fine, although they will need a copy of the guarantors passport and a reference for them they could wait to get it later. However, the lease is still not ready and they don't expect it to be ready until the end of the day. By this time our van had to leave (luckily was my flatmates dad so we didn't get charged for all this but it was his wife's birthday and they had plans) so we had to drive back to our old place and unload the van. The next day we hired a van to come move our stuff, we called up Felicity J Lords 1st and they said that the person we were dealing with wasn't there but they had the keys and was fine to come and get everything sorted.
We arrived only to be told that actually the guarantor was not good enough and that they need a guarantor to guarantee the rent for the whole flat and not just my flatmates proportion (they said they had to earn over £40,000 pa) and that actually the reference for our landlord was not enough and needed references from our employers who obviously weren't going to be able to give one on a Sunday. After much arguing we managed to agree to unload our stuff there but were not allowed to move in/have keys. We were now homeless because of Felicity J Lord but luckily our old landlord was very nice and helpful and let us stay in the old empty place an extra night even though our lease had expired. The next day we did finally manage to get the keys after finding another guarantor to step in and getting the other references they wanted. Of these 3 times we were in their office, 1 of the times there was a couple waiting to be seen in there that we spoke to and were having similar problems to us. Another time a group were in there shouting and swearing at them so I don't think we are an isolated incident.
Of course the problems didn't end there. We got in the flat and there was no electricity or gas. The flat has prepayment meters installed that had a large outstanding debt on. We called up Felicity J Lord asking them to get it sorted and to pay off the debt that has been built up. They said they needed top contact the landlord to get permission to pay of the debt. after 2 days of no electric, heating, hot water or means of cooking they suggested we call up the electric company to try and sort it as they couldn't contact the landlord. After another 3 days we paid off the debt ourselves and told them we would deduct it from the rent. After deducting the money from our rent, 3 days after our rent was due both us and our guarantors received letters saying they were taking legal action for the money we deducted. We received these letters regularly about every fortnight for 2 months until they got it sorted.
Then there was the issue that they advertised it as a flat with 3 double bedrooms but when we looked round 2 of the rooms had single beds so they promised there would be no problem getting us double beds to replace them. After a couple of months and still no sign of our double beds they suggested that we buy the beds and mattresses ourselves but we only had a budget of £150 each. This of course is not realistic so we told them we want them to get the beds themselves as they promised. We have been in the flat for about 9 months now and we still do not have our beds, one of my flatmates has just given up and bought a second hand bed himself, the other still has his single.
Other problems include the sink that was blocked when we moved in and took hours to drain the water. It took 2 weeks before we gave up chasing Felicity J Lord and just got our own plumber out.
We have now had a new major problem arise. We have black mould covering the walls in the living room, the bathroom and one of the bedrooms. We reported this at the beginning of January, it took them 2 months before we got them to send someone round to even look at it. The mould specialist that came said it was one of the worst cases he had seen. He told us that he would be recommending to Felicity J Lord that they replace the broken extractor fan (another maintenance issue we reported when we moved in that nothing was done about) and that they fit aerating bricks throughout the flat to help prevent the damp and of course clean and decorate all the mould. It has been nearly 2 months since then and they still haven't sent anyone to carry out this works and they cannot tell us when it is likely to be done.
All in all there has been nothing but grief in our dealings with Felicity J Lord and I would thoroughly recommend to anyone considering using them to think twice about it.
After the initial troubles we had 9 months ago I decided to look them up on the internet to see if anyone has had similar problems. If you typed Felicity J Lord in to Google back then the 2nd result that appeared was a link to this website (and it still is). But back then they only had 1 star and were listed on the website's home page in the top 10 worst rated landlords. Since we had these more recent problems I looked them up again but was disappointed to see they had moved up to 2 stars and way out of the top 10 worst. It seems that since I last looked on this website there have been a string of fantastic reviews saying how great they are. Now I don't know how legitimate these reviews are, they are about other branches than the one I dealt with so maybe these other branches do indeed deserve the 5 star rave reviews that they have received, but I am doubtful. I know that if I owned an estate agents that was rated as in the bottom 10 out of over 9,000 agents I would want to make up reviews to try and save my reputation. I may be wrong but after my experiences with them I am doubtful and certainly won't be using any branch of Felicity J Lord again.
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