Warnfield Hewitt

Me and my husband had the misfortune to rent a property from this supposed letting agent for 18 months. We should have realised when lauren poole didnt turn up to veiwings that we had arranged before we had even moved in that they were going to be a problem to deal with. When we paid the deposit we were assured that the house would be deep cleaned, that internal doors down stairs would be put back in the house (aparently removed for redecoration of the house) and all repair work would be completed before we moved in (e.g. Holes in ceiling would be repaired and the carpet on the stairs would be replaced as bits had been ripped out ofit) this of course was not the case - in terms of the deep cleaning the house was infested with cat fleas from the previous tenant (which our dog got and made her very ill), there was human hair in the master bedroom that had been left from the previous tenant, the shower had been ripped off the wall and hadnt been put back up (eventually after 3 weeks and thousands of calls they put a new shower in). There were no internal doors downstairs and as there were holes in the front door we ended up having to put quilt covers over the doors to try and keep some heat in the house. The carpet on the stairs was not replaced and both myself and my husband fell on the ripped up carpet on several occasions, there was a hole in the ceiling above the stairs which when we had an independant surveyor look at it informed us that all it would take would be for something to hit that part of the ceiling and it would collapse - we tried to explain this to various members of staff who as seems to be the case a lot of the time said they would ge back to us (which they never did until they got a letter from enviromental health when they also told us that they had tried to help us and we were out of order for getting envirmoental healh involved). We also a french bolier in the house which continuously broke during the winter ( -7 outside and several inches of snow) when we reported this we were told that they would try and get hold of their handyman - after 3 days we still hadnt heard anything - when we rang to chase this up lauren told us that his phone had been constantly switched off so my husband asked for his phone number - surprise surprise the first time we rang him we got through to him- when we asked him why they hadnt been able to get hold of him he said they hadnt even tried to ring him since we reported the boiler (hes the most helpful person we dealt with in the 18 months). So after 18 months of living in what can only be described as hell we gave our notice - we were then told that we couldnt give our notice as we had apparently signed a contract extenion a few months earler - neither me or my husband had (or ever would of)signed a new contract. When we asked to see this signed document they convieniently couldnt find it and after a few weeks of phone calls between the agent and our solictor they finally agreed to accept our notice. We thought (or hoped) that this would be the end of our problems with them - however this was not the case. They would send people round to veiw the house without our prior knowledge (sometimes as late as 9pm at night) this was embarrasing not only for us but for the strangers that would be stood at our door wondering why we werent expecting them. One saturday morning at 9:30am i got a phone call from lauren asking if she could show someone round at 10:30 - tried to explain that i had made plans to go somewhere but was told that she had already told them that this was ok so they wouldbe there in an hour - they turned up 15 mins early and instead of just one veiwer there were 5 different groups of people - it was like an open house that i had no idea was going to be happening. Eventually we moved out and breathed a huge sigh of relief when we moved into a clean, tidy, warm and liveable house. However we were then told that we were not going tobe getting our deposit back as there was lots of things wrong with the house (we had been trying to tell them that for 18 months) that the had decided was our fault - we appealed this decision as we had had the house professionally cleaned when we moved out (mainly to stop anyone else walking into the disgusting house we had walked into when we first moved in) we also had pictures of the state of the house and all the things that were wrong with the house whenwe moved in and pictures of how we had left it when we moved out. We had reports from envriomental health, independant surveyors (friends that had visited while we lived there), call recordings of us both reporting the problems with the house etc. eventually after weeks of fighting to get our deposit back the deposit protection agncy awarded us our full deposit back. Its been over 2 years since we dealt with Warnafield Hewitt and I have to say I am shocked that they are still renting out properties and sill it seems they are just as bad as they were when we dealt with them. Anyone who is thinking of using them - i would save yourself a lot of stress and time and avoid them at all costs.