Hardie Mansfield

We rented a property through Hardie Mansfield. 2 major legal issues which were really unacceptable: - On our move-in date the tenancy agreement was unsigned by the landlord. We were handed the house keys and walked away with photocopies of an agreement just signed by ourselves. Over a month later, they had still not sent the signed contracts. I had to chase them, eventually they got the landlords to sign and we received the signed agreement. Their response was very laid back and they said quote " you are legally the tenants at the property as you have signed the agreement which was securely dated as well". I've never seen an agreement before that's legally binding when signed by just one party. -6 months later we handed our notice in at the property. We then get an email saying our deposit has been registered at the Deposit Protection Service which the letting agent was required by law to do within 2 weeks of originally receiving the deposit all those months ago. The DPS has a minimum retention period so we were unable to apply for a refund immediately at the end of our tenancy because of their late submission. The letting agent tried to explain this away as an admin error and said they had registered the funds at the DPS as soon as they realised there was a problem. What they did not do though was to contact us regarding any problem and the registration seemed to strangely coincide with the end of our tenancy. Please be careful and check all your documents if dealing with this agent. Demand details of the deposit registration number.