Ashi Properties

HORRIFIC! Terrible company! Right from the start where subjected to unprofessionalism. We where taken to look at properties in a car in which the estate agent smoked the whole way there filling the car with two asthmatics in the back seat. We finally rented a property from them and agreed with the advertised price only to have the landlord kick up a fuss saying he wanted to charge more and tried changing our contracts! Ashi properties where helpful in this matter and apologized to the landlord and there was nothing they could do as the contracts where already signed. The landlord continued to pester us by coming around and saying he wanted professionals or a family living in his house and not students (even though the house was advertised as a student house!). After a couple of weeks he left us be the house was grubby and not clean when we arrived and so we cleaned the house from top to bottom. In October our central heating was not working so we called the ashi properties thinking there might be a problem with the gas. They sent someone with a badge to an accredited gas/boiler company around and wile he was having a look at our back boiler realized it had not been serviced in 20 YEARS! (Which was in one of our bedrooms). As well as it not being serviced in 20 year there was a gas leak in our kitchen (We have a gas cooker so could set fire at any point) and a carbon monoxide leak in one of our bedrooms from the back boiler. This man told my housemate that if he did not have the habit of leaving his door open at night he would have DIED. After this the man turned off all the gas in the house and we went without heating or hot water for three weeks! Ashi properties provided us with heaters after a week and a half of us pestering them but no compensation with the lack of hot water for showers ect. When the boiler did get seen to in 3 weeks our landlord came around with two men without ID or even the right tools but proceeded to take the old boiler and replace it with a new one. The builders did not speak any English and on the second day let themselves in the house and burst into our rooms and started lifting up our carpet/floorboards wile we were still in bed! They created damage to the property all over the house. While all this was happening in the upstairs back bedroom the windows seal had rotted away. The window let all the heat out and was constantly a freezing in there and when it rains it rains inside! My roommate had to go to the doctors on more than one occasion due to the chest infections and colds she got through this issue. The landlord got another badge-less builder to come and have a look at this after we contacted the environmental agency. They advised us to give 2 weeks notice to our landlord before they could help us and sort legal action. The landlord turned up with this man on the last day of this two-week period. This man told the landlord that he needed to replace the whole window but he refused and tried someone else to give him another opinion. The second un-badged man told him the same but said as a 'in the meantime' solution to shut it and seal the window shut and told my roommate that for the whole year she was not aloud to open the window. This did not stop the rain completely and we found that piling all the towels in the four bedroomed house against the window stopped the main part of the draft that came from a large gap between the window and the window ledge. After this the bathroom upstairs leaked so much so that the water was dripping through the ceiling and onto the light bulb in the downstairs toilet. We imidiately contacted the landlord as we were fearful that 1: we could get electrocuted and 2: that it could short circuit the house. He eventually came after a week of not using the downstairs toilet. And left saying he would get someone to sort it. After another week of waiting a man let himself into the house and proceeded to pull off most of the tiles in our upstairs bathroom, to fix the one pipe it took this man a week and we were unable to shower or wash properly for another 6 day. When this man was done we went to have a look at the bathroom that had not been tidied and still had broken tiles, and pieces of pipe on the floor. To our surprise he also left a half eaten take away lunch on our floor. In a couple of the rooms where the cold walls where mold began to grow. We opened all windows where we could (minus the sealed shut one) to ventilate the property however this did not help. Our landlord came and brought a cheap mold remover spray, which did nothing but wipe it away, but did nothing to the underlining problem. He then brought around small moisture captures which where placed in the main areas but where filled after just two days. This house has been a terror since we moved in! The landlord is now refusing to give us back our bonds and making up story's we can disprove with photographic and written evidence. After talking to one of the many builders that have been in and out of our property he refused to start work on this property as our landlord has a reputation of not paying his builders for the work they do. However when talking to Ashi Properties, which we signed the contract with, said it is not their problem even though they are the ones we signed the contract with. We have visited the citizen's advice in Cardiff and now Ashi Properties are ignoring our phone calls and will not speak to any of us or anyone on our behalf. We have just graduated and this is a shocking property to rent and having all of this stress within our last year at uni is disgraceful! I feel that if this is the type of property Ashi Properties advertises and backs with their name I will NEVER rent through them again especially as they have now said they will not talk to us and are unwilling to get this sorted.