Dear Annie

Thank you for taking up my invitation to get in touch. I have actually just sent you a reply to your email.

If I have not mentioned this in a previous response, I apologise, but the reason that we thought your group had pulled out because of a change to the group size is as follows:

At the time of the events related to the review, none of the group had been in touch to explain that you were dropping out. We only discovered this when we were called by a parent asking for a refund of your admin fees. It was a surprise to find this out, as we weren't aware of any issues, and we needed one of the group to confirm this to be true. This is why we contacted a member of the group.

It sounds like there was some confusion about the reason when the Operations Manager had this initial conversation, so thank you for confirming the actual reason.

Hopefully that will put that aspect of the issue to bed. We were acting on the only information available to us at the time.

I have sent you information about the meeting in my email.

Best regards

James

James,

As requested, I have emailed your personal email address to arrange a meeting for the 7 of us with you.

Fundamentally, it was not a question of one of our housemates dropping out, far from it; moreover, it was regarding the overly onerous contract that we later read AFTER paying the admin fee and realised was so punitive. Hence, after trying to negotiate the terms of your contract with one of your colleagues without success and as time was of the essence, we then sought an alternative agency. The fact that one of our party later decided to seek alternative accommodation with other students became apparent only after we collectively decided not to sign your paperwork.

I await some dates from you to enable us to discuss the return of our collective admin fees.

Regards,

Annie Griffiths

Dear Helen

Thank you for your response.

Firstly, it's good to hear that the tenants have found somewhere else to live. I'm delighted to hear that.

Thank you for your offer of legal advice, it is very kind of you.
However, at this time, it is not clear what the legal issues are and I would prefer to direct any of these queries to our own solicitors. We would not expect you to do this on our behalf. The question was generated because you contacted us to tell us there were problems, but would not give any further details. It makes it hard for us to set a problem right if we do not know what the issue is. However, it is of course your right to not give any further information.

However, if you think there are valid reasons for us to return the tenants' deposits, we are happy to hear them. I have in fact emailed the tenants directly to ask them this information. As you say, £59 is a lot of money. If there are legitimate reasons as to why we did not keep our side of the agreement, we are happy repay the deposits.

I mentioned in my previous response that we do not hide our admin fees or the fact that they are non-refundable. If the tenants had second thoughts about the house they had selected, we would be more than happy to have helped them find a new property, which the admin fee would have covered as well.

As I said in my previous reply, we did not know that the tenants wanted to find another property, and needed to ascertain that this was the case. We were also concerned that they were unhappy, as none of them had communicated this to us prior to your telephone conversation with the Operations Manager.

Again, I can only offer you the opportunity to speak to one of the senior members of staff about the deposit. However, I feel that we are at an impasse. That said, we have opened the offer to the tenants to speak to us about legitimate reasons for refunding their deposits. Hopefully, with a bit more information, we can sort this out.

Best regards

James

My recollection is that your colleague asked once (not twice) for my comments on your contract, to which I offered to respond if you refunded my daughters admin fee, to which she (and her colleagues) were, in my opinion, cajoled in to paying. However, as you were unwilling to refund my daughter's admin fee, I was not prepared to give you the benefit of my legal representatives comments on your contract - why would I when there was no forthcoming refund? My understanding is that the change from 7 to 6 tenants occurred after the realisation that your contract was so punitive. Incidentally, I believe only one (out of 7) of the prospective tenants have confirmed that they accept that they will not be receiving their admin refund - and only after you had asked them to acknowledge your position; the rest of them are, quite understandably very annoyed that they are each losing £59 that they can ill afford to lose. As a matter of interest, the property they have since found has a toilet and shower for each bedroom and not just the two toilets for 7 tenants offered by you, which I personally found very alarming. On the return of my daughters Admin fee, I am more than happy to provide you with an alternative commentary on your contract; you have my contact details should you wish to discuss further.........

Hi Annie

Thank you for your response. Neither the original reviewer or the other tenant that we spoke to mentioned any problems when visiting the branch, so thank you for bringing this to my attention.

My comments about the original reviewer not wishing to discuss their concerns with the contract are based on the two conversations they had with senior members of the Purple Frog team.

Earlier today I sent you and the other tenants an email about the review and asked if there were any aspects of the contract that weren't clear. Please could you drop me a line so I can find out what your concerns were?

Also, do you remember the name of the person you spoke to in branch? Please could you include this information in your reply to my email?

If members of the team aren't listening to tenants' queries, we need to address this, so all the information you can provide about this experience is gratefully received.

My email address is [email protected], or if you want to speak to me in person about your experiences in branch, you can call me on 0121 796 0041.

Best regards

James

Whilst you state in your previous comment that we had issues with the contract "but did not wish to explain the issues that you have with our contract", it might be interesting to state that we as the tenants did in fact come into the estate agents in an attempt to ask a number of questions regarding the contract and things that we were not happy with, prior to the deadline of the contract. Whilst asking questions, we were instantaneously shut down by your staff; with no opportunity to negotiate any of the terms of the contract. This company is unprofessional and disappointing to say the least.

Dear Sir or Madam

Sorry to hear that your daughter had problems with signing her contract. You have previously spoken to both the Operations Manager and Managing Director about this issue, but did not wish to explain the issues that you have with our contract.

In the review, you mention that the tenancy dates were incorrect. Looking at the notes on the system, I can see that this error was spotted on 17th February and amended on the same day – we even extended the time that the tenants had to sign the contract because of the error. Unfortunately, sometimes errors do creep in to documents. This is why we give tenants 7 days to read and review contracts, and in this case extended that deadline, to make sure they are happy signing the document.

As I mentioned above, as you did not wish to discuss other issues that you have with the contracts, it is difficult for us to review any other concerns you may have. We have our contracts checked by our solicitors, but if there are problems, we are more than happy to speak to you about your concerns – something you have declined to do on two occasions.

My understanding of why the tenants decided not to take the contract is that the group size changed from a seven to a group of six. We gave them the option to continue as a group of six with the same house and find a seventh person later. However, they decided not to take the house and find somewhere else. I don't think this counts as being 'cajoled', but us trying to be helpful. We understand that with large groups, sometimes these issues do crop up and we try to be as helpful and cooperative as possible, to make sure that students don't have to stress about finding a new place.

In terms of the admin fee, we do not hide the fact that this fee is non-refundable. We make it clear on our website:
http://www.purplefrogproperty.com/students/securing-your-new-home/

http://www.purplefrogproperty.com/reserveterms/

And this would have been explained to them when the tenants began the reservation process.

Due to your comments during your conversation with our Operations Manager, we contacted the tenants. We did this for two reasons: 1) the tenants had not told us that they wanted to withdraw from the contract. 2) We were concerned that they had not understood that the fee was non-refundable.
We have received written and verbal confirmation that the tenants understood the terms on which they had reserved the property. The tenants did not actually tell us they wanted to drop out until a day after your conversation with the Operations Manager.

While I understand that it is annoying that problems with the group size has caused the tenancy to fall through, I disagree that this is because of any actions on Purple Frog's part. In fact, we have twice offered to discuss the issues that you have with the contract, but you have declined each time. We have also checked that the tenants were clear about their responsibilities.

While I do not think your review is a true reflection of the issues, I am more than happy arrange a time for you to speak to the Managing Director again, so we can sort out your concerns over the contract.

If you would like to arrange this meeting, please drop me a line on [email protected].

Best regards

James Mason