“FirstPort recently became the managing agent ......”
1 Star Review
Feb 09,2024
By:
'BB'
Feb 09,2024
Branch: New Milton, Queensway House, 11 Queensway
Services: They manage our estate
Would you recommend?: No
Postcode: E2
Branch: New Milton, Queensway House, 11 Queensway
They manage our estate
Postcode: E2
5
people found
this helpful
FirstPort recently became the managing agent of our building, a mid-sized 150+ units development in London, and the service level and conditions of living in our estate have downgraded dramatically since, while our costs have skyrocketed (more than +50%) with no explanation
In the space of 2 years we had 4 different building managers, with gaps of multiple months with nobody on site between one another – while still been charged. No continuity plans were ever made, so each new-comer has been incapable of providing essential services for long after installing
Communication is insufficient and very difficult – the last building manager hasn’t picked up the phone once since his start last fall (now 4 months), residents meetings / reporting have stopped altogether, most email sent are ignored or replied to with long delays, and when they are – often involve these long templates of barely relevant pre-drafted service refusal excuses. When issues are escalated to the helpdesk, the waiting time normally surpasses the 45min, often involves dealing with people with an insufficient command of the English language, often completely unaware of how the Firstport business operates or what to do in the circumstance, and most of the time end up just bouncing any responsibility back to the absent building manager
The out of hours service (supposed to cover for emergencies when onsite personnel aren’t around) operates between 9am and 5pm only and during weekdays only – so all our recent emergencies (including a water outage, a sewage leak and a recent security issue) have all been left unattended / unactioned for days
We have had recurring issues with trash collection (unrelated to the strikes), simple maintenance fixes (like doors or garage gates) are never done permanently and systematically break down again within weeks, essential services like reviewing CCTV are refused giving different silly excuses to different people, and even the police mentioned that they were unable to reach our building manager when trying to make contact past a crime we reported, which was under investigation
This level of disservice is accompanied by a rather irritating attitude of denying communication, pushing back on essential services and most frustratingly – by a vertical increase in costs and charges.
In the past 2 years the development costs increased by +50%, the building accounts were distributed with 20 months of delay, through different sets of documents contradicting each other, and still today no explanation has been given around the cost increase, despite continued demands for clarity.
Their online payment system often misses payments received and automatically charges non-sensical penalties of 20%. They have this practice of slotting unjustified extra charges to the bill, that nobody at Firstport is capable of explaining, and over which more penalties are charged when the payment of these unidentified costs is refused – and this appears to be a common practice of theirs as evidenced by the multiple similar comments on this platform too. In fact, Barry Gardiner MP recently raised the issue of FirstPort's unfair charges in Parliament, the company is currently the subject of a petition for investigation, and has a long history of wrongdoing and scandals well covered in the press before and after the name was changed from Peverel.
Sadly, is rather unlikely that any individual experiencing the damages and frustration of dealing with Firstport will ever be able alone to change his / her managing agent, but the hope with this post is to help anyone still in the lucky position of making a choice, to save themselves and avoid this business. Or at least to create history around the continuation of the company bad practices
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