Hitchen & Co Limited

Helen, Firstly, our move in process is dependant on successful references, as you correctly state, however we have no control other the time period taken to obtain these as they are obtained from external sources. You claim that the delay was in fact down to us not obtaining these references or not 'dealing' with them once they were returned to us. This is not the case, I can assure you that once the documents were received they were processed in a swift manner. All references are strictly confidential between ourselves and any external third parties therefore you cannot state that the delay was due to our failure to act as you would not be consulted by ourselves or any third party during the reference process. As such, you would not know when said references were successfully completed. We would also like to point out that you reserved the property on 28/8/15 yet we did not receive a completed application including documents from yourself until 7/9/15. You moved into the property on the 9/9/15 which shows a turnaround of two days from the date you completed the documents we needed from you on the application to collecting keys. Furthermore, this shows that the application was fully completed from reserving the property to moving in in less than two weeks and not the three weeks that you incorrectly state which is largely down to you not providing documents required. You also state that you had no hot water on four occasions. We only have two records of attending the property due to issues with the water. The Landlord's contractor attended in late October to rectify an issue with the timer whereby water wasn't heating up correctly in a morning. This is not classified as 'urgent' as you do still have access to hot water however this was issue was fixed in 3 working days from when this was initially reported. We then re attended on the 14/01/16 to fix an a total water outage which was reported on the 13/01/16 - within the 24 hour timeline stated in the tenancy. We have the help desk logs which show when the issues were reported and resolved - the log you raised for the outage in January only acknowledges one other similar instance, the aforementioned issue in October, and in the help desk entry for January you actually acknowledge that the October issue was 'fixed at the time' which is contrary to the above claims you make regarding timescales. Another incorrect statement you make is that you paid a 'ridiculously high' £480 'checkout fee'. This was not a checkout fee but rather the fees to re-market the property which you agreed to pay in order to vacate early. This charge is usually paid by the Landlord however you were liable to pay this in order to break the tenancy agreement. By allowing you to pay the landlords setup fee as a compromise to vacate early, which we had no obligation to do as you were in a legally binding contract, you actually saved in the region of £2,486.30 (after deducting the setup fee and factoring in the new the new tenant's move in date) which was otherwise due to us should we have held you to the remaining five and a half month's remaining on the tenancy. Once more we take issue with your timescales as to our re marketing of the property, the property was advertised as soon as notice was given on your part to vacate. It is in our interest to fill properties as soon as they become available hence we have no reason to delay this, you claim we delayed this as we knew you were liable to pay rent and as such saw 'no rush' to find new tenants. If that was the case then we would have held you to the remainder of the tenancy however we let you vacate as a gesture of goodwill in order to allow you to afford a new property as you were relocating for work. Overall, we feel that we were fair with yourselves given the circumstances and in actual fact saved you a considerable amount of money in the mean time. We outright refute your claims as to the timescales for move ins and maintenance and have evidence on our systems to corroborate our claims. We feel that other claims you make regarding the checkout process and spoken conversations are somewhat selective in recollection and trivial in nature and as such do not warrant a full explanation on our part as they cannot be verified by yourselves. It is clear that you were are not happy with the service that we provided however the information that we have provided above shows that we acted professionally throughout and actually acted in your interests despite your failure to recognise this. Regards, Hitchen and Co.

Hello Hitchen. Thanks so much for your reply. I would like to point out that you are 0% recommended on this website, and that there is likely to be a reason for this. Perhaps if you were a little less defensive you might be able to improve customer service skills in your staff, response rates to issues, and maybe rectify the myriad of fees you charge to unsuspecting tenants. These things would go a long way to perhaps pushing your average up to two stars, or three! I would be grateful that this site only allows a minimum of one star, as several of the reviews say they would give you zero if they could. Regarding your reply, I have a few comments. Firstly, regarding the "two day turnover" from returned references to move in. This is simply a lie. I made a fool of myself at my new job, constantly calling and emailing a manager I had not yet met, asking for him to return the reference, only to be told he had done it the week previously. My boyfriend is on great terms with his manager, and when he asked about the reference a week after reserving the property, his manager said he had not yet received any communication from you. So these "third parties" DID communicate with us, actually. Also, I see you make no reference in your reply to the issues you so kindly refer to as "trivial", such as the rude staff (Michelle), the incompetent staff (Bricelle) and how Connor was 40 minutes late for our check out appointment, despite living in the city, and my boyfriend managing to be on time despite coming from Sheffield? Yes, I know we vacated the flat earlier than our agreement - the landlord was happy for this to go ahead and we paid rent until you found someone else. The flat was NOT immediately advertised, we checked every single day as we were concerned about finding other tenants, as we were obviously liable for rent until you did. I'm sure you will delight in the fact that it is impossible to prove, but I am sure the readers of this review will take my word for it. It was well over a week until the address was listed, and the pictures online were of an entirely different flat. I will never rent from this company again. The flat I have moved into has a delightful landlady, and we have had no issues since our move one year ago. Also, thanks for trawling back through the archives of our help desk log but you won't find all of the issues on there as we quickly lost faith in the system after being ignored. We went straight through the landlord for boiler issues at least twice. Your responses to some of the comments on here just show you up for how rude you actually are. I cannot believe you have read all of these bad reviews and not apologised once! Defensive and stubborn, and the worst thing about the company is your staff.