Sham an estate agent like yourself is not more cooperative. You will loose your reputation

You seem to have conveniently forgotten that we were complaining about the mice within weeks of moving in. My first step was to ask for a rent reduction – you recall I asked for that around 2nd Sept. As the full scale of the infestation became apparent to us and when you refused the rent reduction I sought legal advice. At the same time my partner wanted to take pursue a negotiation with you. He did that whilst I pursued our legal options. When our legal rights became clearer to me I complained. As I am sure you are aware, finding legal aid these days is not an easy task but your insistence to muddy the water with our lawful rights to break the tenancy by confusing these two approaches only proves your inability to take full responsibility for the fact that you rented a rodent-infested flat which you STILL have never apologised or compensated us for.
I began negotiation to break the contract as soon as I was aware of my legal rights to unwind the tenancy, as soon as I found out about my rights I wrote to you to break the contract through the correct legal route (which we should have had recourse to and which you refused). At the time I even made you a good will offer of £200 to cancel the contract early, in light of our legal rights, which you refused. Instead you continued to extort £600 from us. My continued complaints rest solely on the fact that you rent out un-inhabitable flats to vulnerable people and that you refused us our legal rights once we became aware of them.
Furthermore, I certainly would not say that withholding the pest control report and instead providing a biased summary of it is ‘cooperating with the ombudsman.’ Your refusal to release other key information such as details about what happened to the tenants who moved in directly after us as well as your efforts of manipulation to falsifying a positive statement by offering a major rent reduction to another tenant on said mice-infested-flat is the REAL mis-representation going on here.
As we all know the tenants who moved in directly after us were able to break their contract for free straight away AND you paid their moving costs. You ONLY did because they had my complaint letter which PROVED that you knew about the mice before they had moved in. Why were we denied a rent reduction and a fee-free break from our contract when, since we have moved out, you have not expected any one else to pay the same or to live in such conditions? The buck has stopped with us only because we made a fuss and complained to you, to each other, to the council and to the Ombudsman.
All the way through this horrendous affair you have been threating and you have clearly been profiting from tenants’ vulnerability. You have never apologised and never taken responsibility. Your tactic is lie and deny all the way. You are the ones who threatened us when we came to the office in person for the first time to show you pictures of the animal faeces and to demand action. You verbally abused us and consistently demanded that we drop our legal actions. Furthermore, I am fully within my rights to ask for my personal data to be sent to me electronically. The GDPR rules are clear, the onus is on YOU to provide us the data and to ensure that you deliver this data in the way it was requested by the data owner. You have delayed and obfuscated for 3 months now and I have no wish to see you in person or to give you my current address as I feel unsafe doing so. Demanding that we collect the data in person when I may want to share this data with the Ombudsman means that hard copies are completely inappropriate and is not in the spirit or the guidance of the GDPR regulations. If you had any inclination to run a law-abiding business, you would know to deliver our data electronically and not be making any demands of us.
If you think this is to tedious I suggest that in the future, you don’t rent out rodent-infested flats to tenants and you treat tenants with more respect. Give us back the money you stole from us!
Note the asterixis above are there to remove references to more common language terms used for faeces and urine and to remove personal names. Once again you are the one a mis-representing the truth.

Dear E and A,

We are saddened that you have once again decided to misrepresent the reality of what happened during your brief tenancy with PW and are repeating, once again, a series of malicious slurs and mistruths. Conveniently you have chosen to ignore your mistruths, threats and general aggression throughout this sad and tiring process. As you know, we are in the middle of a complaint’s procedure with the Ombudsman (which we have cooperated with fully) and we hope this is resolved soon. As you also know, we have not failed to comply with the GDPR regulations. As stated to you on numerous occasions we have compiled the extensive information as requested, but, because of the scale of the information involved, have offered you three options for its delivery. You have chosen to refuse all three and made a threat to make another complaint to another body. All of which is unhelpful though unsurprising.

You chose a flat without your partner seeing it, which you swiftly deemed it to be unsuitable. Within days of moving in your partner made it clear that the noise from the flat – which is above commercial premises on a busy road, very close to a railway – was intolerable because of issues he has with noise and you informed us you wanted to move out. The inventory report rated the flat as in very good condition. But subsequent to your partner telling us within days he needed to move out, you found evidence of mice. We immediately sent contractors into the flat to deal with the issue as any reputable and responsible managing agent would do. Despite this, you wanted to move out and we negotiated, on your behalf, and the landlord, a mutually acceptable agreement. You accepted the terms and we duly went ahead. It was only after moving out that you decided you were unhappy with the terms you had agreed to and proceeded to instigate a an aggressive and malicious complaints campaign – which we have engaged in responsively.

At no point have you been lied to or threatened, or responded to with any less than politeness and calm. Our expectation, unfortunately, is that you will continue to repeat your lies and mistruths irrespective of time or outcome. Which is upsetting obviously and very sad.

We take complaints very seriously (which thankfully are very rare) and always seek to resolve any issues promptly and fairly. As a family business our reputation is extremely important to us. We do not share your analysis of events and have stated this to you on numerus occasions and through the official Ombudsman channels. We await their adjudication. At no point have we resorted to name calling, foul language (allagents confirmed they have redacted some of the extreme language you have used) or shown any form of rudeness. Unlike you, unfortunately. However, we now feel that being called crooks on a public forum has crossed a line. It is completely unacceptable.


Richard and Dan Crowley