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.
- in relation to the 'maintenance issues which then pile up and are presented to the landlord at once' I consider that this is an unfortunate choice of words in that no issues were 'presented' to us. We were told our flat was in acceptable condition and when we arrived we were left to discover damage on a scale that was truly staggering.
- I note that the respondent asserts that our complaint was taken seriously. I consider that it was not. I see that problems are attributed largely to one member of staff but I also consider that the Directors could have dealt with our complaint more effectively. For instance, they could have met us on site and inspected the damage, problem by problem. This would have allowed them to explain to us the issues they were facing. Although they responded promptly and in detail to our letters, they initially disputed many of the problems we raised. On handover day, I asked for someone to come out to the property but this request was declined. I consider that a site meeting would have made the resolution of the issues much easier.
Letting and managing is tricky, I get that. And, I also get that tenants sometimes do awful things and even employees drop the ball sometimes. By far the biggest issue we had with this company was customer service. We all make mistakes and things go wrong, but the measure of a good service is often in how you deal with these issues.
There are many lessons to be learned from this tenancy. I notice that since my negative feedback, a positive review for this firm has been posted. We were warmly recommended to use A Flat in Town by a personal friend of one of the company Directors. We are therefore greatly saddened by the costly problems and dispute that ensued.