I wanted to reply personally to the recent 1* review posted on All Agents. I’m sorry that you appeared dissatisfied with the level of service provided by our company during your tenancy. Unfortunately, it is difficult for us to identify you individually as a client as no name or property address has been provided for reference but instead merely a number which has no relevance to any of our records. Notwithstanding this, I was keen to respond to each of the points you raised as best as I could. If you want to email me directly with more information then I’m happy to investigate further. My email address is provided at the end of my response. In terms of your initial viewing it is difficult to comment now in detail to something which happened 5 years ago, but if as you suggest we arrived without keys then this would have been deemed unacceptable, for which I apologise. However, your trip should not have been wasted as a member of our team would have only been a short drive away from our branch so could have returned to collect them and then shown you around. Sensitive information such as passports are scanned electronically and not held manually for security reasons. Once scanned into the relevant database the documents would have been deleted from our scanning facilities. From that point onwards such documentation is held within encrypted storage. Again, without knowing your name or property address I could not refer back within our database to ascertain why, as you have suggested they were requested on three separate occasions. As part of our ‘fully managed’ contract with landlords we visit each property every 3 months. Not only does this help ensure that tenants are maintaining the properties to an acceptable standard, but it also enables tenants to point out any issues they may be experiencing whilst in occupation. We rarely receive any resistance to this from other tenants. The personnel who conduct these appointments visit a number of properties every day and the time spent at each property can vary depending on their size or related issues which tenants may want to raise and discuss. Furthermore, our personnel will often encounter issues with travel between appointments due to unforeseen issues with traffic. For these reasons we cannot be that specific on time otherwise we could be judged unfairly for turning up later than first specified due to circumstances often beyond our control. However, our approach is pretty standard and certainly no different to other organisations including British Gas, Sky, Virgin or other utility providers etc. In terms of your comments regarding a 2-year tenancy, these were a little unclear. However, any request made either by a landlord or tenant during the renewal process are relayed on to the other party involved. The reason we commence the renewal 4 months prior to expiry of the initial fixed term is that negotiations can often become protracted between landlords and tenants, so sufficient time must be provided otherwise we would have a much shorter timeframe within which to work, and many landlords and tenants would then feel pressurised to make decisions within a much shorter period of time. Certainly from a tenants perspective, our experience indicates that if the landlord does not in fact want to renew a tenancy at the end of an initial fixed term period, then the earlier tenants are made aware the better as it provides more time to find alternative accommodation. If renewal negotiations were left until much nearer the tenancy end date, then in such instances many tenants could suggest they were not provided with enough time to make alternative arrangements. Regardless, we would never ‘hound’ anyone as you have suggested, but where a landlord or tenant fails to respond to multiple requests over a number of weeks in terms of their intentions we must continue to ask as it is not fair on the other party involved. Our Tenancy Agreements are industry standard and approved by all relevant legal bodies. We have no real flexibility to change the contents as they are legally binding documents. We believe our internal communications to customers are written in a way where they point out any legal obligations in a clear and concise manner. We rarely experience issues from other customers in this regard but if you can be specific in terms of which documents you are referring to and what was unclear, I’m happy to investigate further. I am sorry if you felt the general level of service provided by our company failed to meet your expectations, but hope that my explanations to each of your general points raised goes some way to provide a clearer overview as to why we approach things in certain ways. If you would like to email me directly with your name and the relevant property address where you resided as tenants, then I can investigate your concerns in more detail. Steven Bond - Managing Director sb@beresfords.co.uk