As a company, we welcome feedback, both positive and negative, as it provides us with an opportunity to improve our services and learn from experience. You have obviously felt the need to post negative feedback online, without picking up the phone or emailing us first. We haven’t been given the opportunity to discuss your issues or try to resolve them so I believe the way you in which you have expressed and publicised you concerns is very unfair. We do have a formal complaints procedure in place, as is required by The Property Ombudsman, which you could have used but have chosen not to. We are regulated by The Property Ombudsman and are governed by, and follow, their Code of Practice for Residential Letting Agents. The Property Ombudsman will not accept your complaint unless you have been unsatisfied with our complaints process or we have not been able to resolve your formal complaint (which you have not made).

You say that we don’t listen but we provide tenants with every opportunity to contact us by phone or email. To imply that we have been harassing you and been unreasonable throughout your tenancy is unfair, when you have not provided examples within this review.

As highlighted to all tenants, routine inspections are carried out to identify any problems that may require maintenance or repair and to check the current condition and cleanliness of the property. We are not obliged by law to carry out routine inspections of the property, but it is something we do as a service to our landlords. Our tenancy agreements state that access could be requested for us or the landlord to view the state and condition of the property (inspect), provided we gave you at least 24 hours notice. Inspections are a service we offer to all landlords, as the property does in fact belong to the landlord, not the tenant, and it is the landlord’s right to access their property to view its state and condition, provided the required notice has been given outlined in your tenancy agreement. You will find that most, if not all, reputable letting agents will carry out a scheduled programme of routine inspections that will be more than once a year. Whilst we respect a tenant’s right to peaceful enjoyment of the property, we also respect the right of the landlord to access their property as detailed previously.

I notice that you appear to have an issue with us citing wording from your lease. Perhaps you should make yourself more familiar with its contents, as if you had, you would be aware that our attempts and reasons for access have all been permitted within the conditions of the lease, for which all tenants sign and agree to abide by, and it is actually you who is not meeting your obligations under the lease, by refusing access. We, or the landlord, are able to access the property with our keys should you not be in the property or deny us entry, provided we, or the landlord, are requesting access to view the state and condition (inspection), undertake repairs or to show prospective tenants or purchasers around the property, provided that we issue with at least 24 hours notice. I invite you to check through all of your correspondence and find a time when we haven’t given you at least 24 hours notice. May we also remind you that any repair or access deemed to be an emergency does not require 24 hours notice, this access can be immediate.

If there as many’ things wrong’ with the property as you say, then may I just remind you of your responsibility as a tenant to report to us any damage, defect or item in warrant of repair, so we can inform the landlord. Again, this is something that you don’t appear to be familiar with in the lease.

We have always reported our inspection findings to the landlord. We cannot execute repairs without their approval so if repairs are not undertaken we are not responsible for this.

When you do move out of the property, your deposit return will be handled in the same way as all other properties. Any deductions which are made are backed up by photographic evidence taken upon checkout and agreed by the landlord. As your deposit is registered with MyDeposits, you do have the right to dispute any deductions, and MyDeposits do have a procedure which tenants and agents / landlords have to follow. Should you wish to see this, we can provide you with further information. You will have no grounds to go straight to The Property Ombudsman or small claims if you do not firstly go through the MyDeposits dispute process.

That's an odd reply as I recognise the issues brought up by your former tenant 100% - you hassle your tenants to get inspections done when it suits you and if objected to you are not reasonable you just quote sections of the lease and say if you're not in you'll just use your keys and do it anyway. I too have complained about being harrassed (you don't listen!!!) and unreasonableness - and as above what are these inspections for???? The landlord takes no notice and fixes nothing you report anyway - not that you find the things that are actually wrong with the place! Fortunately I do have the time and money to sue you - so when I move out and you try to keep my deposit as I expect you to try and do I"ll be going straight to the ombudsman and the small claims court as is my right - no doubt you'll now write me a long wordy reply telling me how wrong I am and quote procedures I should follow because thats what you do - perhaps you should try actually LISTENING! I note you haven't joined the "transparent agent" scheme? Go on join lets see a balanced view of how bad you really are?

I would like to take the opportunity to respond to this review. We have been letting properties in Durham for many years, and whilst you cannot keep all parties happy we generally part on good terms with our clients. I would like to point out that we are the agents for the property, we act as a middle man between the landlord and the tenants and we have to keep both parties best interests at heart.

The first item I would like to address is the accusation that no works were done when required and when they were the tenants were charged. This is simply untrue. I have looked back throughout the entire tenancy and cannot see a single instance of tenants being charged for any of the work that was carried out. There were breaches during the tenancy one being that a cat was being kept at the property in direct violation of the tenancy agreement. We did not make any charges and simply asked that the cat be removed from the property as soon as possible. Some of the decor required at the end was due to damaged areas being touched in by tenants using a different paint. Again we have pictures of this and the paint used.

With regards to maintenance I can see from our maintenance history that when reports were made a contractor was sent and works were carried out promptly. I would certainly be happy to look into any instances you feel were beyond reasonable, however, we received no complaints during the tenancy. Again we cannot always get contractors as quickly as some people may expect and we can occasionally be let down by contractors like anyone else, however if this had been an issue it was not raised and therefore we cannot deal with it for you. We do rely on feedback from tenants to a degree, if we do not hear from you then we assume repairs have been carried out and you are satisfied.

Regarding your deposit, this was protected by MyDeposits. When you raised a question about the deposit deductions we responded promptly and provided time stamped photographic evidence along with an explanation for the deductions. I also explained that even though some of the damages were substantial a 50% wear and tear allowance was granted by the landlord for things like the stained carpet. I must say i feel this is a fair allowance bearing in mind the good condition of the property when it was supplied at the start of the tenancy. No one from the property responded to this nor did anyone raise a dispute via the deposits scheme, therefore again we assumed this was accepted as you had a full three months to raise a dispute under the rules of the scheme. Please get in touch if you would like further copies of the pictures taken for your own peace of mind.

I feel that the wrong course of action has been taken in writing the above review. None of the complaints procedures were followed, neither ours or MyDeposits and for that reason we feel we have not been allowed to resolve any problems for you. It is always best to try to resolve an issue directly before writing negative reviews. Again I would certainly be happy to investigate any problems you have had during the tenancy if you simply contact us and outline the problems.