My partner and I rented a house through Abbotts Countrywide last year. We have dealt with a number of letting agents in our time, but with Abbotts we had the worst, most stressful experience of them all. At first the rep who showed us around the vacant property was friendly and not at all pushy. She explained that the landlady lived in Nottingham and was looking for long-term tenents who would make the house a home. We called up the lettings office a couple of days later to say we would like to rent the property. Once they had agreed to let the property to us we verbally agreed a move-in date and the rep explained the charges (which were considerably higher than with any other agent we had previously used) - overall the cost was about £450 (between both of us) plus a damages deposit. Bearing in mind at the time we were living in the neighbouring county, 1.5 hour drive away and both working full-time, Abbotts seemed to make little effort to organise themselves to minimise our travelling to and from their branch several times to deliver different pieces of paperwork which could easily have been taken in a single journey. At this point we were told that our case had been handed over to the Southend branch of Abbotts, and the staff at the Norwich branch were unable to provide any explanation of why this was. This meant that further arrangements had to be conducted over the phone. Now we were about 2 weeks from our moving date, with no contracts signed, and having handed in the 1 month notice on our current home at the time with 2 days overlap between properties. Abbotts told us that the deposit was actually £100 more than had originally been stated. Five days before our moving day they contacted us by phone to say that because at the time I was unemployed (we were moving so that my partner could start a new position in Norwich, so I had given in my notice at job at the time) we would have to either arrange a guarantor (this would involve taking the said guarantor's photo ID and consent form into the Norwich branch and paying an additional £60 admin fee) or pay 6 months rent upfront. We opted to pay 6 months rent upfront, although this involved borrowing money (with only 5 days till moving and having given notice on our current home, what choice did we have?), because we were both working full time and unable to organise a guarantor at such short notice along with the other preparations involved with moving house. Then, the real killer - the morning of the move - I had our whole house packed up and my partner had gone to collect the hire van, when Abbotts called to say that the landlord needed more time to complete the inventory and we may have to wait up to a week longer before we could move in!!! We explained that as we had given notice on our current home based on the move-in date that Abbotts had agreed with us they would be leaving us with nowhere to live and after a lot of deliberation they agreed that we could move in in two days time. So my partner returned the van to the hire company and we spent a weekend in our house full of boxes. Then moving day/2 arrived and we went into Abbotts in Norwich to sign our contract and collect our keys. We had made an appointment, and were on time, but the contract was not ready because the rep was waiting on authorisation from her colleague at the Southend branch (although Mr. Southend knew the time of our appointment he had gone on his lunchbreak). So the Norwich rep joked to us 'oh it's always stressful, eh?' and suggested that we take a walk up the road and get a coffee while we wait for Mr Southend to finish his lunch. Finally we got the keys and moved in. Due to the delay collecting our keys and signing contracts our hire van is nearly an hour late back. Subsequently, I rang the agents several time to try to get in contact with our landlady to seek her permission to have a water meter installed, but they kept fobbing me off - saying they would call her and get back to me but then I would not hear back...I gave up in the end. After 6 months, the agents contact us to say that they are handing back control of the property to the landlord...yes, landlord, not landlady. He came round to meet us in person because he only lived down the road (not in Nottingham). He didn't know anything about a water metre, or us paying 6 months rent up front, or him delaying our move in date at short notice so he could write an inventory..... We would never deal with Abbotts again!