Dickinson Bowden

We have had a mixed experience with Dickinson & Bowden, ending with a sour taste. We rented our flat out through D&B starting 5 years ago with no dramas, it was well managed by Lucy Bowden and she was fantastic. When she left things started to fall apart. Communication was slow with Caroline who struggled to complete a simple set of tasks, things weren't chased up with tenants, various things were missed such as a wall that was redecorated from how it was originally left and it was not noted after my tenants moved out. Thankfully I noticed. I was then over charged on letting fees, after my tenants moved out. We then began to sell the flat with the sales side and Joel was great with us but one week he had left the company with no warning. I don't believe it was his responsibility to let us know he'd left although it was out of the blue, but no one from D&B rang to inform us, we were left with out a sales agent making communications with us. We were aware of Joel running all of the sales on his own for D&B so I've no doubt he had a lot to manage. From here on after Joel left, we had no end of issues mainly a reccuring theme of poor comms. Ringing up and never getting through to either letting or sales and having someone answer who says "it's not my area" but will pass on a message, and a number of examples of where tasks were never followed/ chased up - extremely frustrating. My sale took 5 months to go through, there was no urgency or communication with D&B in this time. They then tried to over charge us for the sale £1800 excluding VAT, but I had the original paper work stating it was £1800 incl VAT, again another sign of thier incompetence. I believe they have to much on thier plate with not enough staff, clearly struggling to keep up with their work load in my opinion.