Tag: cardiff

CPS

Wish someone would pay me £40 for cleaning up my housemates coffee stains

From 2018 to 2019, I stayed in a 7 bedroom house. Good size for what it cost but there were some evident issues that needed fixing; namely the backgarden was covered in weeds, the front porch step was broken and coming loose and various patches of mould around the house which we asked to be sorted before we moved in. Only the weeds were sorted, the front porch step was fixed multiple months later after a complaint of the wobbly slab and to my knowledge they’ve never sorted the mould problem despite one of the tenants being asthmatic. Other than that, we were happy to move in despite the general bumps, scratches, dents and stains to be expected when we moved in that were not caused by us.

The issues arose later. I’ll even say, we did require some deductions. One of the tenants put a hole in the kitchen wall but no one admitted to it. Some bin bags were left in the front garden after moving out due to excess waste we weren’t able to get rid of. And there were some little things here in there that were just not able to organise. So a reasonable deduction we expected.
CPS tried to take us for more than half of the deposit. Some of which were the reasonable deductions expected. The rest were either grossly inflated (like £40 to remove a coffee stain from a desk) or outright not caused by us.
They were unable to produce an invoices for more than £800 of the £1500 they tried to take. We had to fight tooth and nail for our deposit back through the deposit protection service, managing to claim a portion of the deposit back.

CPS takes advantage of ignorant students.

Rent: £360

Deposit Returned?: Partially

Keylet

🎵 5 Taps leaking, and 4 fucked radiators, 3 unhappy tenants, 2 toilets leaking and a Completely broken bed!!! 🎵

Keylet’s motto is ‘let’s open doors together’ but what they don’t tell you is, they’ll also slam them right back in your face and jam your fingers in them while they’re at it.

We moved into our property with the sofa having rips in it, marks on the walls and carpet, but overall the flat seemed lovely..for now.

5 taps a leaking, 4 fucked radiators, 3 unhappy tennants, 2 toilets leaking and one completely broken beeeeeeeed ( as well as the door dropping from the hatch). And we’d had enough. Called them up, only to be told you absolutely HAD to send it through fixflo ( oh but don’t forget, you can ONLY submit once otherwise the staff get confused…you have to question their intelligence level if THAT confuses them)

When we moved out, these problems still were not fixed and we actually now ALSO had a broken window. You love to see it.

The place was SPOTLESS. And I mean there was not a sign of dust anywhere…so with a spotless flat but multiple problems reported to Keylet that they did not fix. We didn’t expect the whole deposit back knowing their track record.

Please enlighten me as to how we got charged for none of these problems, despite them not being fixed. But had over £500 removed from our deposit in ‘general cleaning’ and ‘paint retouching’ when we provided proof the wall markings were there when we moved in? £300 to paint tiny marks? Are you hiring someone to paint one stroke a day? Will they be flying from Antarctica to do this paint job? Are you reincarnating Van Gogh for this? The marks were barely noticeable!!!!

In addition to this, we didn’t even see our deposit for 2 months and were repeatedly ignored in emails and rudely spoken to when we called to chase up on it.

For your own sanity, don’t rent with Keylet.

P.S. They walked into our flat unannounced on numerous occasions and once we were all asleep in our rooms and they still came in x

[Editors note: Creepy and illegal by Keylet]

Rent: £370

Deposit Returned?: Partially

CPS

It’s habitable! So habitable that we’re taking it off the market, so no one new can rent it!

Where do I begin?

Firstly, we were promised that the bathroom would be redone but didn’t get this put in the contract meaning that we couldn’t force them to do it despite the promise.

Once moved into the property there were several issues such as severe mould and damp, a broken gate onto the street, a broken window that faced onto the street downstairs and if a burglar saw it could easily break in, cupboards unclean, broken dishwasher, cupboard under the sink disgustingly mouldy and damp, carpet torn, stuff left from painters and a barely functioning front door. There were also damp issues across the entire house.

So what did cps do?

After emailing and calling at least once a week and going in, the window and front door were fixed… in January (only 5 months after we moved in…). Why did they fix it? Because we called the council and had them come round and they threatened to take away the HMO license. Only reason CPS/the landlord did anything about that.

I will give credit that our dishwasher was fixed within a month which for CPS is pretty decent.

With regards to the mouldy and damp kitchen – the landlords excuse was that he was redoing that following summer. That is a bullshit excuse for the condition.

So we had gotten the council round and they sent a report to CPS/landlord. And so they organised to do works which we were told would be minimal and not disruptive, and would also only take a couple of days.

They started the works about 6 weeks ago… it’s still going on. They tore off the outside render, made holes in our house, completely tore up our back garden and filled it with builders crap. Our neighbours actually had to complain because the builders knocked bricks down their fireplace. Due to the holes in the property, we got rats and had to have pest control. This is all happening during lockdown.

CPS have been unhelpful in communication and take about a week to reply. We have asked for compensation especially as one of us is still living in the property during lockdown and having to live in this shithole. CPS simply stated that the property was habitable because there was someone living there – this is not the definition of a property being habitable. We are worried we won’t get our deposit back because of the damage that the damp had done. The builders have stated that they would never have called the work they are doing minimal and that the damp was diabolical. Which considering half my house has asthma and other lung issues, is extremely dangerous.

The property was actually taken off the market after one of their employees came round for a mid tenancy inspection because of the actual house itself. If you have to take a house off the market, surely there is a bigger issue here?

We pay £330 for the house, if I were to price it, I wouldn’t pay more than £280 and during the works, the rent should have been halved. Because of the works we have no garden during lockdown and can’t even open a window in the hot weather because of the dust.

I know CPS is a hit and a miss. But whatever you do, DO NOT GET A PROPERTY THAT IS MANAGED BY CPS AND NOT THE LANDLORD!!!

Rent: £330

Deposit Returned?: Still living at the hole in question

CPS

CPS: Oops! We forgot to tell the previous tenant, that we’re renting to someone new!

Move-in day:

  • One tenant was still living there as CPS ‘hadn’t had time to check the property and go over the inventory with them’
  • Got that sorted, then they gave us all the keys… or so we thought. No front door keys were given, meaning all the previous tenants still had theirs. Had to get the locks changed and give in new keys to CPS (which they claim we never gave them).

House Viewings:

  • All viewings of our house were given less than 24hrs notice, and one was literally 30mins before they turned up at our house, and started banging on windows to get us to let them in. [Editor’s Note: If someone does this in the future call the police and report them for harassment.]

House condition:

  • A leaking tap, all year even though we emailed repeatedly about it
  • Radiator not working & leaking all year (again, having phoned & emailed about it regularly)
  • Bathroom door didn’t close (was by the kitchen) and though we literally emailed them 20 times about this, servicemen just came around, stated ‘you need a new door’ and left, without any resolution.

2/10 do not recommend to a friend.

Rent: £315

Deposit Returned?: Still living at the hole in question

Purple Premier Properties

This Just In: Justin Morris provides a premier service.

Had to submit a review for the best letting agency I’ve ever come across! Have had direct contact with the landlord, Justin Morris, all year, he’s a lovely man who responds to any texts/emails within the hour, for example when the ceiling of our lounge was leaking during a storm he had someone come the next morning and fix the problem. Lovely house with no mold and no problems all year ! Would highly recommend, be quick though as all their houses go by December 🙂

Rent: £340

Deposit Returned?: Didn’t have one

Umbrella Homes

Raining Bigotry with a routine appointment for the shitter

Very poor service. Didn’t clean the property before we moved in. Had no communication with the landlord and blamed it on the tenants. Tried to charge £25 for sending an automated email. Only took the male tenants seriously. Dead named and misgendered a trans tenant constantly despite knowing from day one they were trans. Refused to fit a new toilet, instead we had a plumber come over every time it broke, which was every week, and fix it to work for another few days. He told us we needed a new system but Umbrella were refusing to pay. Tried to refuse giving us a new oven when ours became dangerous, despite the contractor who viewed it saying we needed a new one. On more than one occasion argued with tenants about the lay out of the house that we lived in.

Admitted they didn’t know how to deal with non-students when we challenged bills and charges. They want tenants they can charge for anything. During the deposit system they refused to take tenants seriously, refused to allow us to join them on the inventory, accused a tenant of lying (by shouting in their face). They then tried to charged us £40 for blu-tack on a varnished door and removing a carrier bag from a room. Refused to answer emails, constantly lied to make us concede to the charges. They also refused to give us redress information to complain. They don’t treat tenants like paying clients they treat them like pests in their properties.

If I could give them zero stars I would. I would highly recommend avoiding this company like the plague.

Rent: £300

Deposit Returned?: Partially

4let

Daisy and Peter don’t think tenants need hot water!

My landlord was Daisy/Peter Souto. Poor quality housing, full of mold, no hot water/heating for 2 months, locks so cheap the locksmith won’t cut a copy because you don’t even need the keys.

These landlords rent out their properties through the letting agency 4let.co.uk, they have a massive portfolio of properties that they let to students almost exclusively. Avoid these landlords if you expect the property to be cared for in the slightest.

Rent: £320

Deposit Returned?: Yes

Pinnacle

Pinnacle being the Pinnacle of shite

Pinnacle Lettings Agents are by far one of the worst companies I have dealt with in any capacity.

It would take me an age to describe all the things that have happened in our dealings with them, and you would most likely fall asleep or fall ill before you have finished reading it, so I am going to summarise slightly.

When we first went to move in to the house, moving truck and all, we arrived on the doorstep on the agreed move in date to a house with very few floorboards and full of builders, and were then told the house is not ready to move in yet. (no call or text or forewarning.) They put us up in a hotel for a few days (as per an agreement we put in to the contract because it was getting a bit sketch) and ultimately when the work was hurried finished we were moved in when they told us the house was ‘habitable’ as we could cook (just one microwave) and there was running water (the shower didn’t work, so wasn’t actually habitable) ((we had to pay for the hotel, it took them two months to refund us))

All the rooms were covered in dust and plaster and the house in general seemed previously derelict.

Despite weekly ( and sometimes daily ) emails from us (bare in mind the house was empty for over a year before this, they had a lot of time to do this)

The downstairs toilet had backed up sewage for the first month or two (full to the brim), god knows how long it was like that before we moved in. It was cleared but never cleaned, toilet was unusable and smelled of sewage, it was never cleaned, just cleared. Never functional, they said it was okay because of the amount of us we only needed one toilet.

Before we moved in the house was not cleaned to any standard, we had to attempt to transform it from a building site into a home.

The loft bedroom was not insulated well (some fancy people came round and investigated) so it was always melting hot or freezing cold.

Garden was never cleared and uninhabitable from last tenants. (they sent a contractor round but only paid him to sorta look at it and start bagging it)

When we moved in the freezer was not functional, we had to wait two months to get one.

When we moved in the oven was not working for six weeks. (they said it wasn’t a problem as we had a microwave)

[Editors note: If the inventory list has an oven on it, it’s under the assumption it’s working, your landlord has responsibility to make sure these things are working before you move in.]

When we (like the fools we are) resigned for a second year, we had to pay £100 resigning fee each, in which we resigned the literal first contracts again, dates were not changed at all – paid £500 for photocopier use.

Severe damp on some of the rooms, bed bugs, closets filled with the rubble, them not sending contractors to fix things, or sending people without giving us any warning at all.

There are so many more, these are just the ones that come to mind. Some of this is also the fault of Felix De Giles, the person who owned the property – in which I will do a separate post for.

[Editors note: if the house was rented and marketed to you on the basis it had 2 bathrooms, both bathrooms should be working. Your house should be in habitable condition before you move in. Its your landlords responsibilty to repair these things. If this isn’t adhered to, this is cause enough to exit your tenancy agreement]

Rent: £270

Deposit Returned?: Yes

2let2

2let2, not 2 bad, not 2 good.

Wasn’t too bad all year, bar the landlord shoddily fixing the damaged fence between our property and another with ropes, until it was time to get our deposit back. Took at least a month from what I recall and had ridiculous charges like £70 for Blu-tack marks in one room and £30 for a mattress that was already stained when we moved in. This is alongside £70 to have the house “professionally cleaned” despite us having left the house clean. Classic letting agent deposit scamming, wish I’d kicked up more of a fuss now (was my second year house and I’m now at the end of third year). All round though 2let2 were not that bad, a couple of ignored complaints here or there but if you’re persistent I’m sure you’ll be fine! Not the worst of all the letting agencies

Rent: £315

Deposit Returned?: Partially