ludlowthompson prides itself on being able to fulfill customer expectations, and meet their needs. Whilst it is always our desire to achieve this, should there be a concern from our client we would always wish to be able to resolve it quickly and be given the opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to quality customer service. In order to do this, and engender an approach within our business of ownership and responsibility by all our team for the service provided to our customers, we apply the following approach to any customer complaint / concern:
1. Please refer all complaints initially to the Department that they relate to. (Lettings/Sales/Management/Accounts). Presenting your complaint directly to the party you have been liaising with.
Whilst we would anticipate that this party will have been able to resolve your issue at this stage, should you not receive a satisfactory response or resolution to your problem:
2. Please refer the complaint to our Customer Services Department. (
[email protected]).
Once the complaint is received at Customer Services the matter will be acknowledged and investigated. A full response will be received from the appropriate ludlowthompson representative within 7 working days.
This representative will be a senior member of the team managing the issues on which you have reason to complain.
3. Upon receipt of the response if this is not satisfactory please advise Customer Services and the matter will be referred for review. A full and final response from a ludlowthompson representative will be received within 7 working days.
We would obviously anticipate that no response would leave issues unresolved having been considered to this stage. A 'full and final' response will be advised as such within the detail of the response and will have been provided on behalf of ludlowthompson by an appropriately senior member of the management team to ensure it has been given appropriate review and consideration.
4. However, should this 'full and final' response not be satisfactory please find detailed below the website contacts for each of the following bodies to which ludlowthompson are members. Each will ask you to have ensured you have received a full and final position from us prior to you being able to lodge a complaint with them for review and will guide you on the necessary steps to take.
ARLA (www.arla.co.uk) or NAEA (www.naea.co.uk) or The Property Ombudman (www.tpos.co.uk) . They will then consider the complaint and review the matter.
Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. We wish to account to you on the points you raised and apologise for the time it has taken to investigate the matter thoroughly.
First of all, we regret that you have been left feeling disappointed and frustrated in your dealings with ludlowthompson.
We apologise for the lack of communication between you and your Property Manager. THis is certainly not usual practise for any Property Managers to ignore calls from our tenants.
We do intend that all Tenants can reach their Property Manager or Rent Collection Administrator during the day, and if a message is left responded to as soon as possible. We also have 'call groups' in place so should you not be able to reach your Property Manager another member of the team can help.
In respect of the renewal fee administration charge there was a confusion because of new systems put in place at the time. When ludlowthompson increased the fee for renewal in line with market conditions, your contract was caught up in the hand over period where the system stated the new fee but the contract stated the old fee. Of course, in this instance we would honour those tenants with a previous lower renewal fee. We are pleased therefore that you only paid what you had agreed rather than the new fee. I can assure you this was not an attempt at collecting more monies, but rather a discrepancy between your contract and the newly updated systems.
With the replacement tenancy agreement, it is usual practise for the outgoing and incoming tenants to deal with the deposit between themselves. We are sorry that this has caused problems during what should have been a straight forward replacement on your contract. We have looked in to this and note that mistakes were made, but that the corrected agreement was sent to you immediately.
We wish to reassure you that we do take our client relations seriously and value all feedback we receive. You can read weekly client comments at our website and as you can see we actively engage on this forum. In managing over 16,000 client relationships, at any one time, things can and do sometimes go wrong. However, we believe that one unhappy customer is one too many. As such, we constantly work on our service with innovation and new systems that help make life easier for our clients.
ludlowthompson
customer services
[email protected]