Rees & Associates Property Management

Rees & Associates is set up to make it as difficult as possible for the client and convenient as possible for themselves. To choose various examples at random: I have never before rented from a company that require so many forms to be signed by all tenants throughout the process, they don't allow tenants to pay rent separately (for the convenience of their accounts department), and they visit the property annoyingly regularly, with each visit followed by extremely condescending and invasive letters filled with jargon that requires a dictionary to decode: a personal favourite was the complaint that we had objects in "high traffic zones", ie corridors. Despite being a "fully furnished" house we had no desks in the rooms which they justified by saying that clients are particular about desks (but not beds?!), and the kitchen table they provided for a five person house had three sides and only 2 working legs. We bought a new kitchen table that was well suited to the room and big enough for 5 and offered to give it to the house for free, at which point they said we had to pay to remove the original table and the one we donated. When our shower head stopped working the tenants paid for a new one (we needed to have showers that day so could not wait for Rees to visit) and asked for a refund: we were told we should have soaked our shower head in vinegar overnight, instead of just refunding us £8 (on rent of over £2000 per month). The check out process was better than expected because we were dealing with Jacqueline rather than Angela (and as such we received emails that were less patronising and were at least written in plain English). However, they did still try to make us pay for "additional cleaning" to rooms that we had paid to have professionally cleaned by a company of Rees' choosing, they wanted money to move lamps from room to room, and they tried to make us pay an absurdly small amount for a new shower curtain, and it was only when we appealed the petty request that they admitted they were going to be re-decorating anyway so probably didn't require us to pay. In other words they tried to sneak a few more pounds out of us when the curtain would be replaced anyway (and presumably the house would be cleaned after the re-decorating?). At no point did we feel like a client: we always had the impression they were doing us a favour, or at the very least were looking out for the landlord, although one day the landlord personally arrived to check something and based on his understanding response to the issues we raised it can only be concluded that the issues were with Rees & Associates rather than him. As a side note: Angela then rebuked us for "contacting the landlord" when he had actually turned up unannounced (since when is it banned for a landlord to visit their property or the tenant to answer the door, are we not the clients?) In short, if you want a year of battling over tiny issues, getting buried in admin, and being condescended by a barrage of incomprehensible jargon, I thoroughly recommend this firm. The one saving grace is that the house was great: previous tenants had warned us how difficult Rees & Associates were to deal with, but we believed the quality of the property would make up for it. We were wrong.