Slades Letting Agents

We were not provided with the correct documents when we moved in- e.g. any inventory documents to sign and agree on. Our washing machine, shower and oven were faulty and we had to repeatedly contact them to get the issues resolved. When we moved out after a year of living at the properly, the way we were treated was awful. We also allowed the agents to show prospective tenants around the flat whenever they needed to, even if it interfered with our plans, sometimes they organised three viewings a day and we were very flexible and always accomadated this. We have been honest, trouble-free tenants and when we left the property we left it in perfect condition, in fact cleaner than when we moved in. When we called up to discuss how we retrieve our deposit (again this process was never explained to us) a man that claimed to be the owner was so rude to us on the phone, swearing at us when we asked a simple question about how we go about claiming the deposit back and then hung up. Later we called back and spoke to another agent who said that the man we had spoken to was not the owner. Both myself and my partner have never been spoken to so rudely in our lives or dealt with such incompetent 'professionals'. We were told three totally different processes we needed to follow to claim our deposit back and after not getting anywhere we contacted the Deposit Protection Scheme who confirmed that Slades had not treated us lawfully or told us the correct procedures. The final straw was when the agents tried to take £50 out of our deposit for a 'cleaning fee' which is absolutely ridiculous as nothing needed to be cleaned, as we did it all and left the flat in impeccable condition. When we disputed this with the Deposit Protect Scheme, Slades didn't respond to the DPS about the query for 2 months. During this time we had no access to our money. When we threatened legal action after being advised to by the DPS, Slades suddenly decided to release our deposit. I have since heard of similar experiences with Slades and it seems some of their agents treat their customers with no respect and this experience has put us off renting for life. Thankfully now we own our property and got the money back that was rightfully ours, but I would advised everyone to avoid using these agents because of the unnecessary stress they will cause you.