Moving house is deeply transformative. The ground gives way beneath your feet as you close down one section of your life and open up another, terminating not just utilities, contracts and relationships, but also habits, memories and life strategy. The tenant is vulnerable They need a roof over themselves. There is urgency, there is uncertainty. It's often a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire, especially at the bottom of the housing pyramid. Stags charged me £216 to endure their background checks, the same as 18 months before with another agency. I comitted, and paid for everyone else's suspicion of me to be assuaged once again. After this was cleared, they charged me £42 to register the deposit with a scheme. This means I was charged £42 for some fund manager to enjoy my entire deposit for the length of my stay. All of this is announced as being standard for the industry. No interest on my deposit was mentioned, and even this, from the Tenency Deposit Scheme advisory themselves: “TDS is funded by the membership subscriptions and deposit protection charges that lettings agents and landlords pay. TDS makes no charge for protecting the deposit.” But you thought you may as well pass it on to me anyway. F**k you. Maybe you thought we weren't paying attention. “Stags. Protecting Your Business” it says on the headed paper. That says a lot. “Our reputation is your guarantee.” Your reputation is s**t. But the addendum which really showed the nature of what we're dealing with, was the cat tax. A two page, photocopied bully letter which outlines the measures they will take if your cat is a cat. For this you are charged a non-refundable £90. So I bought it. I paid their sleight of hand rip-off tax. Now that I've bought it, I'm going to tell everyone about it. This is not a service. This is a raid. It is the proof positive of a cruel temperament, to impose tolls on those who need to find that most basic of necessities, a safe place to be. This is pure opportunistic financial gain, expressed with a veneer of law and service, but taking vast, bloody bites out of vulnerable parties. Stags Lettings charged me a total of £348 in fees, for one person to enter a one bedroom flat in rural Somerset. They charged the Landlady £465 in addition. Therefore Stags profited £813 for doing what a simple computer program could do. This is not central London, we are not millionaires. Where did the cat tax go? It has gone to fund some crook's bulls**t aspirational Range Rover lifestyle. Each tenancy involves a vicious kind of legal tyranny, executed in the moments of a transaction between landlord and tenant, the agency as a parasitical opportunist, attaching itself to the deal, using suspicion, doubt and distrust to play the grift on both sides. Stags, and others, usurp the authority of both landlord and tenant, by creating a triangle relationship where they usurp control. Easily-led landlords fall for it, and that is used as fuel to ambush the next mark. Landlords do not even check to see how much the agency is ripping off their tenants. With our sleeping consent, the agent has turned us into the servants. It's not like we don't notice, having our pockets rummaged through by the school bully. A toll road, created of their own design and legitimised by suits and paperwork. The spirit of it is theft, coercion, and greed. Everyone who passes through is subject to being fleeced in this way. Lettings agents have been studying the tricks of their lawyer cousins, and adopted the same techniques of getting rich quick. It would take a person earning £8.75 per hour a full 40 hour working week to equal the charges levied by Stags on the tenant alone. The inequity of this is staggering. So you start your tenancy under the shadowy heartbreak of a heist. You got had, you got fleeced… move on, they urge, take the hit, there's nothing you can do about it. It's standard for the industry. Everyone's charging fees, it's fine. Shut up and move on. Gaslighting is a term used when controlling, coercive behaviour is employed to cover up abuse. Lots of people use it. Lots of 'prodfessionals'. It's a sales technique. The gig is up. You have been busted. You got caught bullying the other kids in the playground. In my 25 years as a therapist, I have come accross several narcissistic psychopaths. Their excuse for manipulating and using people is invariably that if the recipient didn't want to be treated like that, they would say so, but until they say so, it's fine to continue with the agenda of exploitation. What you do is not worth the money you charge. You are not trustworthy. You are not trustworthy. And yet no opportunity was given for me to inspect your ethical barometers. None whatsoever. I wouldn't trust you any further than I could throw you. Quit your job, do something useful for humanity. And yet there is hope. Instead of enforcing ludicrous financial tolls on passers by, perhaps Staggs lettings agents might turn around to their paymasters and ask “WHY?” Have a voice. Have a backbone. Each push toward tyrannical rip-off is making the world a crappier place. You know it's a scam. You know it, and yet you set your alarm each morning and set out to impose a load more fees so your boss gets a villa in Tuscany. Work hard, play hard and all that crap. Turn the bullshit machine and get money, all at the expense of the person on the very bottom. After this, a voluntary payback of tenants' fees would absolve some of the insult. Yes, you'd have to convince your boss that it was the right thing to do. Perhaps the gamblers in you would prefer to have a long, drawn-out PPI scenario where more sharks come to feed on the carcasses of the sharks who were there before. Either way, say goodbye to the Range Rover. We're fed up. We're fed up of the feeding frenzy, the 'business as usual' apprach to organised grifting. This is not exchange, this is punching your clients in the teeth and stealing their resources so you can have them instead. Well, this client has nothing left to lose, and that's a danger for you. F**k you. And this is the world which you will leave to your children. A world of more competition, lower ethics, greater inequality. You've swallowed the lie and given it to them; they will not thank you for it. All over the world there is deperation; the forests are being felled, the oceans are being poisoned, the human species is pushing an agenda of destruction on the planet. And here you are, floating in a privileged pool, stuffing your pockets before anyone notices. Well, you've been noticed. By us all. Feed off me no longer. Purposeful, intentional insertion of distrust between landlord and tenant for the purpose of financial gain by agencies is being glossed over as procedural. In addition to this, there are tricks which the industry uses in order to ensure your compliance. These include faux surprise when someone questions the scam, and an assurance that you are the first to complain. This is a very mean trick. It speaks of narcissism, compulsive lying and erratic defence. “There's someone else who really wants it, you'll have to move fast”, they say, as the photocopier churns out another £90 punch in the nuts or ovaries. It's like shooting fish in a barrel for agents. There are more houses needed than there are available, so they continue to knowingly push sub-standard accommodation, looking to turn a trick from a desperate tenant. By adding your signature to tyranny such as this, you are bound by law. It's a trap. It's a tax, it's the same sh*t the robber barons were doing in the middle ages, the exact same crap, over and over again. The world will not magically become a lovely place by usury, theft or selfish coercion. You're actually going to have to change. You're going to need to extend kindness and compassion, not panic and punishment. What is this pressure, this agonised terror which runs in the blood of lettings agents? You may be addicted to anxiety, but it's not appreciated here. You are being used as canon fodder in the front lines by tyrants. In all four cases of lettings agency misery I have experienced in as many weeks, the front line agents were always women. The men were in charge further up the pyramid. Think about that, ladies. You're being used by aggressive pricks and their Mercedes dreams. Keep away from me. In no uncertain terms. I always dig out parasites. With this statement, know that the moment has come, and this is where we start to say no. Send back my £348 and that will be a start. And here, from the government website, is the state of your industry and the true feeling from the tenants you abuse with fees. It's amazing you need to actually be told this. No wonder you've been ramping up the cowardly shake-downs of late: The draft Tenant Fees Bill will: “Create a civil offence with a fine of £5,000 for an initial breach of the ban on letting agent fees and creating a criminal offence where a person has been fined or convicted of the same offence within the last 5 years. Civil penalties of up to £30,000 can be issued as an alternative to prosecution.” “More than 9 out of 10 tenants who responded to the government consultation backed the action to ban letting agent fees, with 7 out of 10 of them saying these fees affected their ability to move into a new property.” This places some degree of suspicipon on your 5* reviews from other 'tenants' here, don't you think? Lies are easy to spot, especially from people we already know are untrustworthy. For any tenants reading this, current or prospective, find your voice. Become difficult. Say no. I am absolutely livid with the treatment I have had from all lettings agents. It may be that you need to end up homeless in order to feel the real squeeze of what you have done, and what you continue to do daily. So let's just wish you the most perfect thing that anyone can wish for anyone: May you get what you're giving. Threefold. (You have been charged £696 for this review).