Rent-Smart.co.uk

One of the worst services I have ever used. My wife and I were shown around a property by an agent ("adam"). We were told that we could fax the application form and all relevant documents back to him, which we did the next day. Over the course of the next three weeks, we phoned the company 12 times to request an update and were either told by the receptionist that "daniel" would ring us back before the close of business (he never did), or on three occasions, she put us through to daniel, who told me that they were just "waiting for a document back from another applicant". He would not tell me why he had allowed multiple applications to be processed at the same time, and said that all he could tell me was that he would have a decision for me on x date. Each time, Daniel told me that "you will definitely have an answer on friday", or tuesday, etc. No calls were returned, leaving my wife and I in total limbo. We didn't want to have to withdraw from the application process and forfeit our fee (under their terms and conditions), but needed a property urgently as we had committed to rent our home out. My final contact with the company was on 13th April 2013 when once more, I rang up find out what was going on. The receptionist spoke to me abruptly and said she had tried to call me "loads of times". I asked her if she had left a message on my voicemail (and told her that I had had no missed calls, and could demonstrate this from call records). She then said "so are you withdrawing from the application process?". I politely and calmly told her that there was no way that I was going to pay the company any money. She then passed the phone over to adam, who in an even more abrupt tone, told me that he "never took my application seriously". I asked him why and also why no attempt was made to contact me. He said that we never paid the fee that he asked for. I informed him that neither himself, or any of his colleagues had requested the fee, despite me calling them at frequent intervals and asking what they needed from me. I should point out that both myself and my wife have an excellent credit history, and good salaries in excess of the national average, so paying the rent is not an issue. The company agreed to not take any money because "we never took it in the first place". I have written this review as a warning to all prospective tenants planning on using the rent-smart.co.uk service (not to be confused with "rentsmart"). I will leave it up to you to decide what the intentions of the company were in this situation, but I personally am in no doubt that their intentions were far from honourable. I will never use this company again and am extremely thankful in hindsight, that I didn't rent a property though them.