I'm a Brit who currently lives between the UK and France. I decided to let my flat in London out in May. The agent first told me they would take 8% commission, and that they would get loads of viewings as they said the flat was amazing. I went back home in Paris feeling confident. Two weeks passed and I heard nothing. After asking, I got an update saying there were some viewings, but no offers. They told me to put the flat on at 950 a week initially, then suggested going down to 895 to attract more viewings. I was disappointed, but agreed. Still no takers, and no updates, unless I specifically asked first (which usually incurred a long distance call on my end). I also hired Green & Co to put the flat on the market. They said it was initially overvalued and suggested 850/wk. Shortly after, around 2 months from the initial instruction, the flat was let out by John D Wood in August. At that point, my husband was told that he would be permanently relocated to London in October, but as our flat is a 3 bed and we are just 2 people, we decided it would be cheaper for us to downsize into a 1 bed and continue letting out anyway. I explained this to the agent, Emma, and told her that as we will be back permanently in the UK in under 2 months and have UK bank accounts, she should not consider us to be overseas landlords, even though the only address we would now have is our French one, as the British one was about to be let out, and we hadn't found a new, smaller flat to let yet. She agreed to this, and when she presented the agent's terms and expenses to me, we agreed that the overseas tax they would normally take off for foreign landlords would not be applicable. She then told me that their terms were 10%--this clearly went against the 8% I was initially told by Stuart! Unfortunately, he only told me that orally, not in writing, so when I called him out on it, he denied it. But I am 100% sure he told me 8%, as that is the same fee Green& Co told me. Stuart's 'mistake' ended up costing us thousands more than expected. I asked to meet the renters in person, and Stuart told me they would be moving in on August 5. I stayed in London to meet them face to face, and no one showed up. I stayed another day, and still no one. Eventually, I really had to get back to France, so left without knowing the people who were renting my flat out. To avoid paying their £75 inventory fee, I drew up an inventory myself, yet none of the tenants were there to verify and sign it! I still don't have a signed copy of this. The worst part of this is that after telling Emma that we will be back in the UK permanently in about 5 weeks, she charged us BOTH income tax on rent earned over the entire year--a total of over £4,000--even though we would only be 'foreign' landlords for two months, and still paid taxes normally, as Brits! She was on holidays (her second in the 2 month period I began doing business with the company) and couldn't be reached for comment. When I finally did get hold of her, she denied ever having the overseas landlord conversation with me (though I still have the paper where she crossed out that part of the contract) and I was told that I would have to undo this mess on my own. Of course, this will cost even more extra money, to pay an accountant and/or lawyer to 'undo' John D Wood's mess. Overall, this agency doesn't communicate well with clients OR between their own staff; lies about fees; cheats clients out of thousands of pounds by giving them misleading information; overvalues rental properties; can't be bothered to make much effort to do anything for the client. Terrible agency. Avoid like the plague, unless you like being lied to and paying thousands of unexpected, extra pounds for nothing.