just out of interest which area was this property in?

These are justifications from you as to why we had a poor experience. At any time you could have fed back to the landlord on the problems us/you were facing - but you didn't.
All of these are normal issues that estate agent's face on a daily basis - most handle it with ease and agility.

Clearly, a number of people have left negative feedback and you've refused to improve your processes. How is that working for you?
Just a reminder....

Ranked 10738 out of 12624 Agents

Dear upset tenant,
I am sorry that you feel so strongly that we have did a disservice to you.
Each time you flagged up a general maintenance matter, we acted on this straight away. Your ex-landlord is himself a builder and insisted that he wishes to sort any matters flagged up himself and as such our hands were tied as we were not given the authority to send in our own contractors. We had to depend on him and liaise with him and this as you correctly pointed out, caused delays in resolving matters efficiently.
In emergency situations, I beg to differ as we did act on this straight away, using our discretion and rushing our own contractors over. In such situations, we do not worry about the costs involved as its paramount to firstly resolve the issue at hand.
While I agree that the landlord, being our client has to be respected as its his property and his call that we act on at the end of the day I however reject your statement that his word is gospel and that we do not know anything about property law. We fully recognise that being property managers we have a duty of care to both the tenant and the landlord and work very hard in ensuring that we treat all parties fairly, sensitively and respectfully. I have been doing this job for 15 years now and within the same organisation and over the years, I go for about 2-3 training courses annually to keep abreast on the latest regulations within the property industry.
Although, we have most of your details, our accounts department insists on verifying your bank details and your forwarding address again simply to ensure that there are no issues later with the return of the deposit as there have been past instances where we have remitted monies into the account details that we have on file only to be told later that the accounts have changed over the years. I hope you agree that its best to double check especially when it concerns client monies.
I however dare not say that we are perfect. We work hard yes and hope to always achieve the high expectations that both our tenants and landlords have of us and will continue to work harder and address ways on how we can be more efficient.
I wish you every success with your new property. My best wishes will be with you always.