Mr Shipp,
Many, many thanks for your in-depth reply to my review of your company. This will be my last missive on the subject as :
a) to paraphrase Winston Churchill , I refuse to get drawn into a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent
b) my interest in the matter has waned somewhat, as I now understand that any form of apology is beyond your capability.
I, like you will address your "points" in order.
I understand you use an independent company to perform your inventory checks, however, I would question using a company that omits entire rooms from the inventory list, in our case the small room at the top of the stairs which was full of electrical items including a dehumidifier / hi-fi and various miscellaneous household items. I also understand that the landlord has the final say in the matter so maybe some of my disapproval should have been directed at them, but as we were allowed no contact with them and you are their representative I have to address the issues with you.
One point I would make regarding correct grammar.

"we will advise them on the matter and at the same time point out to them if they are being unreasonable but ultimately it is there decision."

. "Their" is a possessive pronoun. "There" is an adverb meaning that location. There are some embarrassments that spell checker cannot save you from.
I also understand that, with regards to the drain being blocked that the onus is on the tenant, and as I stated in my review I had no problem with that. However my issue was with the time it took for the money paid by myself to be refunded. In your response you claim that 4 weeks was a "slight delay". Should I have withheld my monthly rent by the same timescale would that have been considered a "slight delay" also? I think not. The expression "over a barrel" springs to mind.
Regarding the 3 month review I find it strange that you can be so forthright on a conversation you were not present at. When I referred to items being removed from the list I was referring to the lime scale encrusted outlets on the bath and various other dirty items which we spent considerable time cleaning and therefore no longer on the "faults" list . I believe there is photographic proof of this. I was not inferring that items were removed from the inventory list.
Moving on to the bathroom damp situation. As you stated in your reply there was a dehumidifier left at the property, though as I have stated this was not on the inventory. We notified your company of the problem within three months of moving in which would have been in September when I believe the weather was quite pleasant. You seem to imply that the damp problem was of our making and nothing to do with the fact you had knowledge of the problem and chose not to action the remedial works until we handed our notice in and obviously being winter the weather wasn't the best.
On a final note, I do indeed know that there was an error with regards to an overcharge on the carpet cleaning but if you read my review I made no mention of this on my original review as I can understand human error and did not want to a big deal out of something that was sorted and apologised for. As stated in my original review I can accept there were faults and oversights on my part something you seem unable to do. Maybe a career in politics beckons.......
Regards

John,

Thank you for your recent review, I am sorry you have been disappointed with the service you have received, I will deal with your points in order:

With regards to the check in and out process, we use a fully trained independent company to produce both reports so there is no bias for any party. On the day of check in you are given a full inventory, then advised verbally and in writing on the front of the document you have 48 hours to make any amendments you wish if you do not agree with any of the inspectors comments, this document is then used at the time of checkout. In reference to the checkout, it is forwarded to your landlord and she has the final say on what deductions she wishes to be made, we will advise them on the matter and at the same time point out to them if they are being unreasonable but ultimately it is there decision.

The tenancy agreement states that unblocking of drains is primarily the tenants responsibility and you were made aware of this, as soon as we were advised it was something more serious the landlord did agree to reimburse for works you had carried out. We were advised to reimburse you for this but under our governing body unless we have rent income for that property we cannot use another clients funds to pay for another properties repair so we requested the landlord forward us the monies. The landlord was away in the middle of this issue and this is where the slight delay occurred in monies being refunded, I apologise for this but as you can appreciate it was out of our hands.

We carry out 3-4 monthly visits on our fully managed properties, I can assure you and everyone reading this review that we never remove things from the list. A full written and photographic report is forwarded to the landlord and followed up by the staff, the landlord has the final decision on whether works are carried out off the back of this report, again as an agent we cannot force them to do works.

The neighbours were aware of works that needed to be carried out as it was in fact a shared chimney that was causing a slight issue in the corner of the room, ordinarily this would not have been that noticeable but as everyone knows we have had a huge amount of rain since October. The bathroom is situated in the rear addition of the property, if it is not heated and ventilated properly there is the risk of condensation, due to this the tenants were provided with a dehumidifier which also helped in preparation for any remedial works needed. The chimney works have been quoted for and agreed by the landlord at a much earlier date, the issue we have had is finding a few days where the weather is good enough to carry them out, this has been a tough task in the last 4-5 months. I disagree that conflicting information had been given to the new tenants as we allow around 10 working days between tenancies to carry out any works needed, details of which they were aware of.

One of your last comments is on how we refunded your deposit, as explained to your fellow tenant we can transfer deposits direct into peoples accounts through our specialised property computer programme, however as we are a business and make bulk payments (We pay a minimum of 40-50 different people a day so is not viable always pay individuals) it does take 2-3 days. Your payment did get sent on a Thursday meaning unfortunately the weekend did extend this period of time which was out of anyone's control. I can make individual payments in certain circumstances but we prefer to do most payments via our computer system so there is a log that all staff can access.

We did make one error when processing your deposit which was queried by your fellow tenant and he requested I look into it after various email exchanges, all of which were responded to in a very timely manner and in my eyes I communicated clear answers to his queries. The only reason I can see why he did not think this is when I emailed my colleague querying about the carpet cleaning, I cc'd him in on it so he was aware that I raised it as a query bearing in mind that my colleague had dealt with whole process and would be able to give an immediate answer. He saw this as me thinking that I am too important and in his words my time is too precious, please let me assure you again this is never the case hence why I reply to every review on this site and deal with any issue that is brought to my attention, before, during or after a tenancy.

As stated above it was deducted in error during the checkout process, the inventory clerks made a mistake and had put this on the report, they confirmed that this was their error and once my colleague had realised that it had been charged for she emailed an apology and I arranged an immediate transfer into his account due to the inconvenience it caused.

Thank you once again for your comments, we always welcome feedback whether positive or negative.

Regards

Graham Shipp MARLA
Director