Oh wow, another person dealt with Bahrul at Barnard Marcus. I last spoke to him a few years ago.
Bahrul is one of the most incompetent & dishonest people I've ever had the misfortune to meet. Usual story of things not working & not being fixed, losing keys, losing paperwork. He got the names of people he worked with wrong (obviously my name too), couldn't use his work phone, computer, printer. He was always shabbily dressed and stank of stale cigarettes and strong body odor.
The fees levied before even signing up for the 12m lease were outrageous, but I foolishly didn't question them at the time. It turns out some of them were simply made up and those that were "standard" the prices wildly inflated.
Even signing up the lease required me to make 30-40 phone calls over about 6 weeks. He would constantly promise to do XYZ by the end of the day/week etc, and never did anything. Let me stress this, ANYTHING. I had to literally go into the agents multiple times to sort out the most basic of things because he was so disorganized and incompetent.
During the lease, multiple issues were never fixed (leaking roof, broken/leaking radiators, apartment never cleaned before moving in etc). Even paying the direct debit required hours of my time because they "deleted" it after 2-3 months.
After 12 months, Bahrul called to ask if I wanted to extend the lease (I did for 6 more months, but the owner was going to let me stay on a rolling basis). He said I had to pay the extension fee of £150. I said I wasn't going to do that. I got another call 10 minutes later saying if I paid within 7 days I could get a discount. I then asked Bahrul if I had to pay this fee, because it seemed they had just made it up. He finally admitted it was an optional payment. I said I would take the option to not pay it. read more