Tod Anstee

Me and my partner rented our first flat with Tod Anstee Hancock last year. We should have known that it was a bad move when they forgot to meet us for the inventory and to hand us the keys! When we first moved into the flat in March, the external walls were wet and we've raised concern about this but we've been told that it was because the flat had been empty for a while and the weather outside was cold (I should probably mention at this point that none of the storage heaters in the flat weren't working which we discovered after doing an inventory of our own). Anyway, we had few problems in the summer, nothing major but as soon as the weather got colder, my boyfriend who is severely asthmatic, started sneezing a lot and feeling ill most of the time. We still had no heating apart from an electric radiator which increased our electricity bill by a lot and only heated one room, and the flat had no extractor fans so the only way we could ventilate it was to open the windows every day despite the temperature outside being below 5 degrees Celsius. In the end, we discovered thick layers of mould growing on the external walls behind the furniture which we've cleaned, but the walls never got the chance to dry because there was no heating in the flat and the mould kept coming back and both of us became very ill as a result. We've contacted Aimee several times trying to push for someone to come have a look as this has nothing to do with our lifestyle but the poor insulation of the flat and lack of heating. After being dismissed several times and being told that it will get better once the weather gets warmer, Aimee finally sent someone to have a look (it "only" took 2 months) and we've never heard anything back from that visit. A bit of backstory, our landlord sadly passed away during our tenancy and the agency could not be bothered to deal with these issues so they kept putting it off until it got to the end of our tenancy and we've decided to report them to the council but because we were moving out in a few weeks, there was nothing the council could do about it but keep the complain on their records for future reference. We've also contacted Mr. Hancock himself who said that it is our fault and put us back in contact with Aimee although we specifically said that we are not pleased with the way she is dealing with this. All in all, we did get all of our deposit back, mostly because of all the complaining we did and the fact that even to the last day of our tenancy they still hadn't dealt with the mould issue and because we've left the flat in a cleaner state than it was before we moved in. I am strongly advising everyone who is thinking of renting through Tod Anstee Hancock to stay as far away from them as possible! They are a team of unprofessional and rude people who couldn't care less about your problems as long as they still get their money.