Ashraf Ramadan said about Urban Sales and Lettings Online Estate Agents

Services : Letting( As a Owner )Date: 11th Jul 2020

Stressful Experience - Evasive Estate Agent

One thing, I have been doing for a long time is to take a Rent Recovery Plus insurance policy. I have always been getting the insurance through Urban Sales and Lettings rather than getting the policy directly from HomeLet.

In Dec 2019, my existing policy was coming to an end. I received a reminder from Urban Sales and Lettings regarding renewal of my policy. I responded expressing interest in renewing the policy on the same terms and conditions and advising there has been an increase in the monthly rent. Urban Sales and Lettings sent me a PayPal link to make the payment (this is how I usually pay for renewal). I paid and sent them the PayPal payment notification. In the same email I requested the new policy documents to be emailed to me just like every time. No documents were sent to me. As all of us have many things in life.... I forgot to chase Urban Sales and Lettings for the documents.

As a result of COVID-19, and the stress many fellow landlords went through due to tenants not being able to pay rent, the first thing that came to my mind then was the insurance policy. When I searched for the documents, I discovered I did not get them from Urban Sales and Lettings. So I contacted them (to be more specific I contacted Daniel King - Lettings Manager) requesting a copy documents which should have been emailed to me back in Dec 2019.

After about one month of going back and forth, claiming they were getting in touch with HomeLet to get the policy documents (something no one can believe as it should not take more than 5 minutes to send a copy of the pdf file for an existing policy), Urban Sales & Lettings wrote:

"I do hope you are well, after chasing Homelet for some time they have stated that they claim not to have received our request to renew your rent recovery plus. I am in conversation with their underwriting team to get this resolved as quickly as possible for you. Normally this would not be an issue as we could start a new one however due to the current COVID situation, they are not taking on any further rent recovery plus.
We understand that this is not an ideal situation but we are working tirelessly to get this resolved".

Feeling something was going wrong, I decided to use the official "Subject Access Request" to check if Urban Sales and Lettings did request the renewal of my policy back in Dec. 2019. After some argument, all I received from Urban Sales and Lettings was a text file with my name, address, telephone, and email address, BUT no details on any communications regarding me. Daniel King wrote "I did speak to the ICO directly about this and the right of access only entitles individuals to information, not documentation".

I called the ICO and they confirmed the above was not right. In fact on the ICO's website the following example is cited: where a client potentially makes a subject access request to his/her bank for full copies of his/her bank statements. The ICO makes it clear that while the "bank is not required to provide copies of the actual bank statements, ... they must provide you with your personal data contained within them, for example, by providing you with a list of transactions".

So it was obvious Urban Sales & Lettings did not act inline of the law to reveal the information as it would show they have not done the right thing. Urban Sales & Lettings insisted they did everything they could to protect my interest as a client and they have done nothing wrong.

I decided to contact HomeLet directly with an official "Subject Access Request". It took Homelet about 3 days to send me the information. While the file did not provide copies of emails between Urban Sales and Lettings and HomeLet, it did list all the times where my name/address appeared on their system. The report shows, without any shred of doubt, that Urban Sales and Lettings has not requested the renewal of my Rent Recovery Plus for 2020. This is a simple derivation from the fact none of my details appeared on their system till 28th April when Urban Sales and Lettings emailed HomeLet a copy of my original paypal receipt. The same document, I emailed to Urban Sales and Lettings back in Dec 2019.

I believe the above is unacceptable. Imagine you pay to insure your car. You get a payment notification the payment was went through. 4 months down the line you crash your car. You call the insurance company to be told: "Yes we took the payment but we did not setup the plan....sorry; you have no insurance".

It is frustrating Urban Sales & Lettings are still denying any wrong doing till now... I will follow legal channels to get this put right no matter what it takes.

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