They are billing us excessively for cleaning or trying to the only thing is I have not signed the damages form and wasn't present at the check-out inventory meeting so they don't have my agreement for it to have been independent.

They are blatantly making money out of the cleaning that takes place. I have asked for itemised cleaning bill but they refuse. Instead charge me £90 for general clean-not including oven or windows or anything major at all. Just a few touch ups. We even agreed to pay half but its not negotiable. They want a further £90 to tidy a garden patch that is so small at the front of the house which already had dead plants when we moved in. They have a photo of it and they're trying to dispute it saying it looks different now. Duh! It's a year later! But it doesn't change the fact that the dead plants were there when we started out. Altogether we are being billed £257 for a house that looks absolutely clean when you walk in windows and all. I still think I wouldn't mind paying if a more itemised or professional receipt of works was given to me rather than a general statement of rip off:) for that reason I'm just going to let it go into ADR make them sweat it a bit.

Sadly,

Your comments may turn out to be fair. I have learned today that the deposit return would be at the discretion of the landlord (who has always been excellent), although they tried to ask me to sign a form for an unspecified amount of deposit to be returned. Romans very much made it look like they were going to reduce the returned deposit by an unspecified amount for cleaning. Unfortunately, I was given absolutely no choice about check out date (or time), and as a result of my job was unable to attend the check out appointment and meet the inventory clerk.

Hopefully my experience will end the same as yours. Unfortunately I still would never deal with Romans again for the other reasons given previously.

I agree with you about the tenancy contract renewal fees. However, the rest of your review is based on your assumptions and not facts.

I expected them to charge us for carpet repair, professional cleaning, etc... but they didn't. We got full deposit back.

The independent inventory clerk really was independent from Romans, he complained to my wife about some minor issues in the relationship between their company and Romans. He was nice and to be honest not very thorough in my view since he hasn't spotted a piece of carpet cut out and replaced in the middle of the living room. :-) He was happy to put a bit of mould in understairs cupboard as the only negative thing about the house - according to his words Romans wouldn't like a checkout report with no faults found.