We are committed to providing a high-quality service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.
If you have a complaint about our service, or about the service of a contractor or third party who we have instructed to provide goods or services in relation to a property owned by or occupied by you, please write down the details of your complaint and send it to:
A Flat In Town Ltd, 36 East Claremont Street, Edinburgh, EH7 4JR
[email protected]
On receipt of your complaint we will adhere to the following procedure: -
Stage 1
We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint in writing within 5 working days of receiving it, giving you a named contact who will be dealing with the complaint.
Stage 2
Your named contact will then investigate your complaint and will send you a detailed written reply, including their suggestions for resolving the matter, within 10 working days of us receiving your complaint.
There may occasionally be circumstances outwith our control which prevent us from adhering to this timeframe. These include: -
• when the office is closed for public holidays;
• where adverse weather or sickness has led to staff shortages;
• where we cannot respond in full without the input of a third party (e.g. contractor, landlord, tenant) who is not available;
• where we cannot respond in full without visiting the rental property and the tenant is restricting access;
• where we cannot respond in full without the input of a key member of staff who is not available.
We will contact you if we are unable to respond within this timeframe and let you know when we aim to respond by.
Stage 3
Upon receipt of our response under Stage 2 above, if you are still not satisfied, you can contact us again in writing and we will arrange for a senior manager to review the decision.
Stage 4
Our senior manager will write to you within 10 working days of us receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
Stage 5
You may apply to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing & Property Chamber) if we have breached the Scottish Letting Agent Code of Practice and you remain dissatisfied once the above stages have been exhausted, or if we do not process your complaint within a reasonable timescale. You can contact the Housing & Property Chamber at: -
4th floor
1 Atlantic Quay
45 Robertson Street
Glasgow
G2 8JB
0141 3025900
https://www.housingandpropertychamber.scot
A Flat In Town will be registered with the Scottish Letting Agent Register in 2018 (registration number : to be confirmed ) and is required to adhere to the Scottish Letting Agent Code of Practice which can be found at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2016/133/schedule/made.
In accordance with the code we will retain (in electronic or paper form) all correspondence about a complaint for five years.
We are so sorry to get this review but do feel that a number of points have been misrepresented. As you will be aware, we only received the final two references this morning (28th July) after much correspondence where we made it clear that we needed a full application before being able to consider you both for the property. We also tried to verify your references (as a professional company should) but were unable to. Due to inconsistencies with the information, we felt unable to proceed with your application and let you know accordingly. It may be that you wish to call the current letting agency to clarify their records as they informed us today that they weren't aware of you living in the property, despite you telling us otherwise and the current landlord is such an important reference for evidence that you will be a good tenant going forward.
You mention that we do not make it clear what information is needed in a reference, however we do ask all the information you have provided to be verified. This information includes your current rent, address, length of time in the property etc. We ask for this reference to be provided on headed paper or professional email so that we have all the contact details so that we can follow up the reference with any questions, however this was not provided in your situation which has made the application more difficult to examine. This information is all on the application form.
We like to be able to present all our landlords with a well researched, promptly submitted application where we are able to answer any questions they have about who will be moving in and their situation. We did not feel that we could do so here and as you mention, it is a popular property and there are many other people keen to view and apply. We always continue to advertise a property until we have someone secured for a let in case applications fall through.
We realise that we are a very thorough agency and while many agencies are happy to accept applications on a first come first served basis, taking the property immediately off the market, but we don't work like that as we are keen to get the right people in to the right property. We take our responsibilities as agents for a landlord's property very seriously and have to be able to look at solid, verifiable applications.
If you would like to be in touch directly, please do not hesitate to contact either Sally or Katrina (details on our website) and they would be happy to talk this through further. If you would like any of the paperwork that you submitted to be sent back, please also do not hesitate to ask.