The agent employed a builder who botched the moving of my washing machine, resulting in leakage. The builder also didn't clear his rubbish away as per our written agreement. I had to pay to sort both things out. The builder reacted hysterically when I forwarded the bill from the emergency plumber (£147). He rang up the plumber and berated him; so much so that the plumber wrote a blog post about it (http://www.plumber24hours.co.uk/plumber-blog/index.php/2012/04/18/how-to-washing-machine-hose/). The Belvoir agent named above went into blame-the-victim mode. He didn't do anything to get the builder to remove the rubbish either, even though he explicitly said he would. The agent is a deeply unsympathetic man; he is also insecure, in that he points out his office assistant's grammatical and spelling errors in front of clients. The builder was deficient in other ways, but there was no point in bringing them to the attention of the Belvoir agent, who had shown he would do nothing on my behalf. The agent took 10 percent of the builder's fee (excluding the 'off the books' (and quite possibly illegal) builder's demand for £3000) but did nothing for it. I suspect he (and the builder) saw that I am a non-confrontational person and took advantage of that fact. I have been angry and upset with him, because he did nothing for me, and shouted at me in a public environment. Now I feel genuinely sorry for him, as he is obviously in a position for which he is not suited, and subject to stresses that he cannot handle. It is all very sad. I hope this post lead to him finding a more congenial position, for his sake and those of his other clients.