Sparks Ellison

We have had an absolute shocking experience with the lettings team at Sparks Ellison. We viewed a number of different properties in January 2018 (with different estate agents) and thought we had found "the one" for us when we viewed one with Liz at Sparks Ellison. She told us the property was in good condition and didnt have damp of any kind which was good for a property of its age. We informed her that it was a must that there was no damp due to medical reasons and due to the fact we had a young child! She promised us there wasn't. We were told that work was going to be done to the communal entrance which was falling down. Within the first month of us living at the property, damp appeared in the bathroom and on walls in both bedrooms! The extent of it proved it was there before we even viewed the property and had just been painted over! This caused numerous medical problems for our family which in turn caused loss of money (totalling nearly £2000 in one year!) from having to miss work to get better or look after our young child! After a year in the property the communal area still hadn't had any work done to it and the damp in there started spreading further up the corridor towards the front doors of the flats! After less than a month in the property the fridge/freezer stopped working, luckily it started working again but we lost £100s worth of food. It then fully broke down a week or two later. We were offered NO alternative for this whilst waiting for the landlord to replace it even after losing 2 lots of shopping (worth a total of £250!). Oh and guess what was hidden behind the fridge when they removed it? Yep you guessed it...damp! And lots of it!! The delivery/removal guys said that it had probably got into the fridge/freezers electrics and would probably be the reason it broke down!! When given the inventory at move in we were asked to return it to them within 2 weeks and they would arrange for any work to be carried out. NOTHING was ever carried out, even when we popped in and asked in person for the bedroom door and kitchen door to be fixed. 11 months later the bedroom door was finally replaced but the kitchen door never was. This was a huge risk if there was ever a fire in the kitchen/property as the door had bowed and couldn't be closed. It was also next to the front door so if the fire was in there it wouldn't have been able to be contained for any amount of time to safely get our family out!! Shortly after moving in one of the lettings team let themselves into the property with their maintenance guy without notifying us. My husband was asleep in the flat at the time as he works nights but luckily didn't wake to them doing this. It was also lucky our young child wasnt at the property as a stranger letting themselves into his home would scare him for life! We only knew they had been in as they had moved some of our belongings to access the fridge/freezer for measurements! This was absolutely unacceptable as it was even written in our contract that they needed to give notice to enter the property! Also when viewing the property we were promised that it would be cleaned before we moved in as lots of spiders and other creepy crawlies had moved in whilst it had been vacant. Again this never happened and we had to spend a couple of hours cleaning before we moved in to clear all the spiders, spider webs and dust. Anytime we contacted the lettings team at Sparks Ellison we found that they were quite abrupt and rude...especially Debbie! Towards the end of our tenancy she became exceptionally rude and even ignored numerous emails from us which was highly unprofessional! Before we ended our tenancy we went into branch to talk to the team about our options of continuing tenancy on month by month basis until we found somewhere else and to see if there were any other properties with Sparks Ellison that we could let. We were told that everything was out of our budget, that there was no properties coming available soon within our budget and we would be better off looking at the Eastleigh town centre area as it was more our market and would be more affordable. We were gobsmacked that she had said this to us especially after we had no problems affording anything during our tenancy with them and were looking at increasing our budget! 1 week later a new property alert came through from right move for a 2 bedroom flat that was for less than our budget with Sparks Ellison....so much for no more properties coming onto the market eh! We made numerous phone calls to the team in the summer of 2018 regarding the tree in the front garden. It was rotting away and branches were falling down left, right and centre. A large branch fell down one day, narrowly missing the postman and two smaller but chunky branches had fallen onto our young child when he was playing. Our concerns for this were completely ignored so the garden became off limits for us all due to health and safety reasons! Basically to summarise...if you rent from Sparks Ellison expect to be treated like a dog turd they've accidentally stepped in. You wont get any respect, will be fobbed off with excuses, will get full attitude when you ask anything and to top it off, you won't ever feel comfortable in your own home as you need to expect them to just walk into your home whenever they want!