Gill said about Pennys Estate Agents

Services : Sales( As a Buyer )Date: 24th Jun 2016

We sold our house in Bedfordshire using an excellent estate agent there. In February 2016 we were viewing properties in Exeter including some being marketed by Pennys. On their website they had a house being renovated that was due to be finished in November. The only information provided was a photograph of the view from the top window, a room plan and some notes. During a casual conversation with a Pennys staff member, it emerged that it had been due to have been finished in November 2015, not 2016. Pennys had not updated their website. Having learned that it was near completion, we asked to view it and subsequently agreed to buy the house. The vendor however, delayed instructing his solicitors for the next 7 weeks. During that time not only our solicitor was chasing matters, but also our estate agent in Bedfordshire because obviously, such a delay could impact on our sale. Pennys, on the other hand did nothing and seemed unaware of any delay. Subsequently, there were further delays, and at one point, because Pennys failed to return phone calls, our estate agents had to resort to contacting the vendors solicitor directly (our solicitors were doing the same thing). Eventually the legal work began and the vendor appeared to be shocked at the amount of paper work that he was expected to produce. He was a relatively young and inexperienced developer, and I would have expected someone (possibly Pennys) to have provided at least some guidance on what paper-work would be expected. Finally, after 4 months the sale went through. When I spoke to a senior staff member at Pennys, he told me that he had been surprised when he learned that the house had been sold. I contacted Pennys about collecting the keys. I specifically asked that they should check that the vendor provide all of the keys. I don't know why I wasted my breath. Of course he failed to hand over the keys to one door. I asked Pennys again to arrange delivery of the missing keys - on this occasion a staff member delivered them but she failed to check that it was the correct key - it was in fact a duplicate for another door and the missing key was still missing. I asked 3 different members of staff on 3 different occasions who was responsible for paying for a new lock. At no time did they pay me the courtesy of answering my question, even to say it would have to be us. I have given up with them. They cannot say that this extremely poor level of service was due to one particular staff member who has now left. We dealt with 4 of them over a period of 4 months and they were all as bad as each other. They often didn't return phone calls, they didn't seem to care whether the sale went through or not.

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