The letting agent tried to take advantage of my naivety as a student so I brought my dad along to every meeting which worked well and made him back off.
The house was crap; damp, broken furniture, broken front doors. When things were eventually repaired it was a bodge obviously done my the agent's mates. We moved into the house after friends moved out, the only reason we chose the house was because it was currently housing kit for our University Society and it would have been a lot of effort to move it.
The letting agent didn't release our deposit despite saying we COULD have it back, he gave us a 10 day timeframe within which we should receive it, 14 days after that, no deposit showed up. We threatened legal action and he finally gave us the money, which came from a Natwest personal bank account. We pursued this issue and found out that not only was he illegally witholding the deposit but he had not put our deposit in a protection scheme, as is legally required by all letting agencies. We decided to accept the deposit as we were tired of dealing with this shambles of an agency, though we were within our full rights to claim 3x our deposit back from them.
I spoke to the Accommodation Services at Sheffield Hallam University and had the agency blacklisted, I wouldn't recommend anybody to use this agency.
The house was £700 a month split between 3 people, this year I am living in a house that is £750 a month and far far better, so the incompetency isn't even made up for by it being a cheap letting agency.
The user who gave the agency a 5-star review is referring to the ease by which you can move into the house with Alexander Estates, and while I must agree that it was easy to move in (mainly due to the lack of forms I had to sign, and the overall informal nature of the handover) I would quite like to hear what this person's opinion is of Alex Estates after having lived at the house for at least a year.
Just don't use this agency, find a proper one. read more