“Factual reasons to avoid PJ at all costs from my personal experience...”
1 Star Review
Apr 28,2021
By:
'Will'
Apr 28,2021
Branch: Manchester, 679 Wilmslow Road
Services: Lettings (as a Tenant)
Would you recommend?: No
Postcode: M20
Branch: Manchester, 679 Wilmslow Road
Lettings (as a Tenant)
Postcode: M20
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Factual reasons to avoid PJ at all costs from my own experience:
I lived in a house let by Philip James for 2.5 years and nearly every interaction we had with them was negative.
1) We were a house share at one point we wanted to swap one of the tenants for another friend, Philip James tried to charge us £780 for this admin change with no contractual justification, this was then reduced to £420 and then dropped entirely. This took weeks of pointless back and forth and took us calling Citizens Advise Bureau and recording our phone calls with Philip James as they were so slow on email.
2) Our oven broke and it took 12 weeks for Philip James to arrange for a new one to be fitted, it was always someone else's fault - the landlord, the gas engineer etc. Eventually we had to contact the landlord directly to get Philip James to act on what should have been relatively simple. Even when we had a new one fitted the old one was left out side the house for over a week until a random scrap dealer collected it which Philip James hadn't arranged.
3) The customer service team are hard to contact, and will often be unavailable to avoid assistance. On one occasion I spoke to someone on the phone, and arranged to meet in the office 30 minutes later, by the time I had arrived they had vanished.
4) To avoid checking on essential maintenance with landlords, Philip James will send a handy man to patch up a job rather than fix it pushing the issue further down the line for tenants and landlords. Such as fixing a leaking roof with bathroom sealant or moving broken kitchen handles to alternative cupboards.
On the flip side, Philip James were good in terms of compliance (electrical testing) and in allowing us to move onto a rolling one month contract during COVID.
All in all Philip James seems to make what should have been a relatively streamline letting but small admin or maintenance issues would take forever to resolve during which Philip James' staff seemed unhelpful and lacking empathy.
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Philip James uses approved contractors to do maintenance work on the properties we manage. I can see that for any issue that was reported during your tenancy, we quickly sent qualified contractors to do the work required. Our general maintenance contractors are all extremely competent and have their work checked on a regular basis to ensure tenants are getting an excellent service.
The Philip James team are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via our out-of-hours service. If staff did not respond to emails and calls in a timely fashion during working hours then we sincerely apologise and please rest assured this is an area we monitor and continually review. Best Regards, The Property Management Team