It's a shame I had to give this agency one star, they are absolutely TERRIBLE.
Firstly, their staff are rude and unprofessional. They're inefficient and couldn't give a dog's ear about you and your circumstances. Don't have a home to go to next week? Sequence don't care, they're working 'to the best of their abilities'. When any other agent would have had you in to the new property last week!
Apparently it's because they use a below standard referencing agency, which charges you £110 per reference. If you're under 21 or a student, by the way, that's £110 for everyone in the property PLUS £110 for each guarantor - nice!
Generally, after paying £440 for this service, you'd expect them to 'do' something. Oh no. Not a thing. Up until 2 days before we were due to move OUT of our old property (and therefore have nowhere else to live) they still hadn't done any reference checks or written up the contract.
With this in mind, we had no other choice but to pay 6 months' rent up front - our only way out of the mess - we thought!
After more problems and call backs and stress - they finally accepted our payment for 6 months up front rent, they put together the contract and we were given a time to go and sign.
This wasn't, of course, until the day which we had agreed to move in had passed, we had moved out of our old place and were having to pay for a hotel and self storage for all of our stuff.
At this point, we were then told because we'd paid ALL of our rent, that they were going to take a DOUBLE deposit of £1250 meaning that after scraping every penny that we had to pay in to this mess-up, we STILL have to fork out another £525 for the final month!!
By this time, we just had to agree - what else could we do?
After moving in to the property we decided to complain, to which we received a letter in return that couldn't have sounded less bothered. It blew away all of my issues and worries and basically told us where the door was.
We requested back the fees for the reference checks, but they said the checks had already been carried out - how could this be the case? If so, we wouldn't need to pay the 6 months rent??..... I also checked my credit file to see if there were any footprints - NOTHING. They just lie and take as much money as they can, left right and centre.
Never, EVER let from these people!! Sequence are the head, but they also have 'local offices' such as Allen and Harris who we dealt with in Bristol - STAY AWAY FROM THEM ALL!!! There are plenty of other agents out there, this one is to be avoided at all cost. read more
