Tag: mould

2let2

mouldy ice box, thx 2let2 xoxox

m8 am living in a shithole, was put in a shit situation in the first year and had to just choose people to live with this year. I’ve essentially moved in with strangers who refused to come back to Cardiff after April last year, so I don’t know anything about them. I got shafted with the smallest box room as I was the last tenant to move in, and we had no agreed way to designate rooms (my mistake).


I live a lot further away than them to Cardiff and so can’t afford to be going home a lot, and I work in Cardiff as well as study. I’m often in the house alone, the house is small, and being given the smallest room is bad for my mental health. The room I was given is covered in mould and I continually have to spray mould remover and have my window open (which only makes my room freezing). My curtains are covered in mould as well. I have had 4 chest infections since moving in, once it developed into bronchitis. I understand that mould is a tenant problem to solve, but I have contacted 2let2 multiple times to replace my curtains and put a dehumidifier into the room. They argued there was no use in a dehumidifier and the curtains weren’t that bad… the curtains are meant to be a white fabric on the inside, but are a murky grey colour, with patches of black from the mould.

For my mental and physical health, I’m now having to move out and find another house. 2let2 in my opinion are bad, I would never go with them again

Rent: £365
Deposit Returned?: Still living at the hole in question

Seraph Management

Seraph: Cold-blooded criminals who will relish in your misery for the prospect of a few pence.

There were several risks to life in the Seraph property I resided in.

  1. The winding stairs.
  2. The electric cooker
  3. Bell wire across the top of the primary stairs entering the building.
  4. The primary stairs itself.
  5. The hole in the 1st-floor landing top of the primary stair.
  6. Rotten windows.
  7. Carbon monoxide ingress.

One person broke their neck on a dangerous stair. Another fell sustaining an injury to his leg, whilst I myself sustained 2-years monoxide positioning, which damaged my blood for life and made me dependent on tablets.

They refused to resolve issues, were, rude, biased towards the criminal landlord, endangered lives & are very clever in getting away with it. Their own maintenance manager in the last inspection stated “I should blow the place up”.

Environmental health did attend, however, their own employee failed to make reports and was dismissed.

Rent: £400

Deposit Returned?: Yes

Keylet

Key Letting Us Down

I signed with Keylet. Moved in, arranged inventory inspection. Booked the morning off work, waited half hour after booked time for the inspection. Called them – nothing in the diary, the person that does it is off sick. I completed one independently and took images (luckily), sent this to them via email and dropped it off to the office.

I reported 18 repairs using their app. Only two of these were actually dealt with (damp – painted over and bathroom door). Things I reported included: mould, damp, oven broken, leak under the sink, mice, rubbish and unclean when I moved in to the property, bathroom door did not close.
– There was someone’s lunch and other rubbish as well as it being unclean throughout the flat when I moved in. Said they would get someone to come and clean it but never did.

Asked them 3 times to send me updated version of the inventory I conducted, never received it.

Moving out: the costs for what they had found on the inspection conveniently totalled up to the total deposit I paid £575. Including charges for a broken sofa (was not damaged), removal of rubbish (nothing left in there apart from furniture they provided & as if they remove rubbish anyway considering the state it was in when I moved in), painting (nothing wrong with the painting whatsoever) and so on. It was all ridiculous and completely false. Conveniently they also could not find the inventory I did and had one on their file which was incorrect.


Luckily I took photos and had the email I sent. They ended up only taking £100. Still not great but I decided to take the hit. It took about 5/6 months to resolve. They stated in emails they would respond within 10 working days but would take weeks.

I have spoke to other people who have rented from them who have faced the same problems and them trying to rip them off.

I am so relieved to not have anything to do with Keylet. They are SHOCKING and I would AVOID them at all costs!!!

Rent: £575

Deposit Returned?: Partially

Uncategorized

Signing up with 👑 Kingstons? You’ll be their peasant

Genuinely the worst company I have ever had to deal with. When it came to move-in day, I was unable to get into my room as no-body in the office had a key for my locked bedroom. I had to wait 3 hours with my Dad in the car outside until the landlord could arrange for a handyman to come and change the lock on the door and let me in. My Dad then had to dive back to my hometown 3 hours delayed- no apology from the office about the wait or the fact they had lost the key to the bedroom.

When the door was finally opened it was clear they had not made any of the changes they had agreed to in the contract signing. It had been agreed that the single bed in my room would be upgraded to a 3/4 bed and a desk and chair would be provided for my housemate. They had been warned several times of when we would be moving in. Throughout the year we had several issues that were either not solved or took months for them to get round to. This included my housemates’ desk collapsing in her hands and an incredibly moldy fridge which was not hygienic enough to keep food it when we arrived. My bedroom was very small and had no insulation so got very moldy after a few months of living there, it also gave me a bad chest from sleeping in the room overnight. After complaining to Kingstons someone from the landlords’ office came to clean it which was great until she happily told me that if the mold returned she would be charging me and that I needed to keep my window open. It was February and I could see my breath in my room as it was.

When moving out of the house in June we cleaned it thoroughly but had to fight for 2 months to get our deposit back as they would not accept the fact that we had closed our water account when returning home during the pandemic. When finally receiving the list of ‘damages’ we were shocked to be charged a whopping £158 each (there are 4 of us) including £100 for cleaning, £28 for each de-weeding the garden and £46 each for an inch stain on the worktop. When we queried the damages we felt completely unjust, including the stain, some of the charges were dropped but we were told that the landlord was going to have to replace the whole unit. I do not doubt in my mind this will not be replaced. We have ended the year losing £120 of our £350 deposit each for a house we really looked after. A disappointing and difficult company to deal with needless to say we did not sign with them for the third year.


Rent: £305

Deposit Returned: Partially

CPS

Is that rotten eggs I smell, or just CPS homes again?

CPS are honestly the worst agency I’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Me and 4 others lived at 76 Colum road in Cardiff, a seemingly lovely refurbished new house, no contact with the landlord and all problems to be dealt with CPS directly. (Using Rent Smart Wales we found our their landlords were Andrew Winsor and Gaynor Grace Winsor.)

Where to start?… well how about the start! The end of our first week of moving in I noticed the smell of gas coming from the kitchen, upon ringing cps and a gas man coming to deal with it he told us the leak on the ground floor was strong enough that if someone was living in the downstairs bedroom there’s a chance they may have died, it was a potentially lethal gas leak.

In our first month in the house, we noticed multiple problems, the downstairs bathroom having a pipe that leaked whenever the toilet was used, the kitchen oven was lodged out of place and rattled whenever being used, mould all over the front room wall behind the sofas, a window frame in the upstairs front bedroom that couldn’t close and a long list of smaller problems.

Obviously we reported all of these problems to CPS and the only one that was sorted was the leaking pipe in the bathroom.

Here we are 12 months later, having moved out 2 months ago, still without our deposit back and we’re being charged for all the things listed above and more. £101 for a cleaner to do 2 hours of cleaning in the house? What was £359 off our deposit has now become £399? Half of which is the problems that we had already told them about and they did nothing to sort out, now we have to pay?!?

Their an absolute joke and unfortunately own the monopoly on Cardiff’s student housing but I pray that one day they get put in their place and sort it out!

Rent: 350

Deposit Returned?: No

CPS

CPS seems to be really into walking in on naked tenants. Voyeur kink, much?

We decided to rent a house with CPS for our second year, a mistake. Aside from paying half rent over summer (2018) for a property we didn’t even have the keys for, all seemed ok…

Until we actually moved in, the kitchen was filthy, it took my housemate hours to clean it. At least my room came with a free gift, a pair of mouldy high heels at the back of the wardrobe!

After a few weeks living in the property, I noticed a thick layer of mould along the wall below the window sill. Around the same time, I started getting recurrent chest infections. Even after wiping it off, it came back after a few days. I contacted CPS who blamed me for the issue and reminded me of the ‘expensive dehumidifiers’ the landlord had purchased, out of the goodness of his heart! And told me to open a window.
Evidently these were measures we were already taking, two dehumidifiers don’t divide well between five tenants, and the fact that my room was on the first floor – particularly in autumn/winter, I obviously couldn’t keep the windows open 24/7.

Yet despite measures we took, the damp still accumulated every couple of days in huge amounts. I continued to email CPS, who maintained it was entirely my fault, and that it’s completely normal to wipe mould off a wall every few days, basic upkeep I suppose! I continued to have constant chest infections and even started coughing up blood from sleeping in a shithole every night. I spoke to my GP, who suggested the mould was likely contributing to it (I didn’t experience anything like it before I moved in).

Eventually (after emailing CPS consistently) I asked the council to send someone over to have a look, who advised the window needed to be resealed at the bottom, and the breeze of cold, damp air entering the room didn’t help. At this point we managed to get in contact with the landlord directly, who was happy to get it resealed quickly and take other measures to resolve it – funny, he didn’t seem to be aware of the issues that had been occurring, it seems CPS wasn’t even doing the bare minimum of letting him know of our concerns.

However, my personal favorite experience of CPS, was getting a knock on my bedroom door in the morning, followed by someone trying to open it (followed by 5 random students doing a viewing), as I lay naked in my bed, trying to get some rest after a night shift. When I told them to ‘fuck off’, the agent got a bit shitty, I suppose it is out of order denying strangers access to my bedroom and a view of my tits. Fortunately, CPS had graced us with a text message notice, 20 minutes before they arrived, clearly I was in the wrong for not hearing my phone go off whilst sleeping off my shift.
[This is completely out of order, 24 hours notice must be given and you have the right to refuse entry. ]

They also knocked on the bathroom door when I was doing a shit once, again without notice. I’m not sure how their potential tenants felt viewing the bathroom, as the scent of my feces, mixed with the Febreeze I attempted to cover it with, wafted towards them.

When we questioned this and the whole 24-hour notice rule, they told us they would give us notice every single morning otherwise, how thoughtful of them.


(Photos attached are after the 2 weeks I was home for Christmas, clearly I should have kept the dehumidifiers on, the window open, and returned every couple of days to wipe the walls down)

Rent: £325
Deposit returned?: Yes

Capital Properties

Capital Crisis

We rented a house through Capital Properties in Cathays. We have rented with CPS and 2let2 before and neither compares to the experience we had at this house. When we first moved in the house was in an absolute state. Mouldy curtains, thick black mould in kitchen, YEARS worth of filth, brown and orange stains, broken furniture (beds missing leg frames and completely collapsed, wardrobes damaged and held together by chewing gum) and stained mattress covers. It was so disgusting we wrote and called repeatedly until they came and repainted the bedrooms. As for the black mould – the roof needed structural repair. After being told the bathroom renovation and roof would be done within around 10 days, I can tell you now this was an absolute lie. Months later the work was finally done, only to discover the newly fitted shower and the existing one upstairs didn’t work. Straight away we knew we had an issue with the boiler as the showers wouldn’t get warm, and it took them MONTHS to even send someone out to see what the issue was.

The maintenance man – a shoddy, untrained, unprofessional, misogynistic man who barely fixed anything and regularly fly-tipped broken furniture we forced them to remove from our property. Not only is he a maintenance man – he is a part-time bailiff – after one of us locked ourselves out of our room (we were still in the house) at 10 am on a Saturday he attempted to charge us £80, when we refused he waited outside our house for almost a week demanding to see my housemate. When asked why the charges were not £30 as in the tenancy agreement, he shouted: “that’s nothing to do with me!” – a professional at heart.

The landlords aka ‘Capital Properties’ – Anne Marie Hamzelou and Nader Hamzelou routinely take it in turns to direct Capital Properties, who conveniently have no public office you can visit and reliable phone number to reach them on. Interestingly, a quick search on Rent Smart Wales (the governing body for rented properties) will reveal that neither our landlord (Nader) nor capital properties held a supposed license to rent our property to us in the first place. After lodging a complaint with RSW and speaking to the council, they came and inspected the property – concluding that one of the rooms was actually not permissible and required structural change. We presume the council’s recent enlightenment was the only reason we were able to get the majority of our deposit back.

[Rent Smart Wales is a great resource and you can find their landlord listings here, if your landlord isn’t on here and own an HMO then they are breaking the law.
https://www.rentsmart.gov.wales/en/check-register/ ]

The year we rented with Capital Properties was the most stressful I have had to date, they are a shambles of a ‘company’.

DO NOT rent with them.

Rent: £340

Deposit returned?: Partially

Orinoco

Drugs, Mould and Rock and Roll

We rented with Orinoco. When we moved in the fridge was full of maggots (initially they denied all responsibility and refused to clean), there were rats inside the house, mould on the walls, chewing gum on the floors, drug residue in the draws (burnt spoons, ripped foil, needles) and the whole house was dirty and had a musky smell. Throughout the tenancy we transformed the house, we deep cleaned it ourselves on move in, then again when Orinoco wanted to take photos for their website, for all their viewings and finally on move out (the place was spotless). During one of the deep cleans we took off the extractor fan chimneys to find that they weren’t connected to an external source, instead the smoke and steam was pumped straight back into the room. Not to mention the fact that throughout lockdown I transformed the garden from an overgrown skip to clean, tidy, presentable garden.

On move out the agent attended the property and commented on how clean it was and stated they would only charge for a burnt window sill in one of the rooms (fair enough). I was then shocked to receive a list of charges (mainly cleaning) worth £340. To top off the negligence and disgraceful nature of this company when trying to dispute their charges they took days to respond to every email. After numerous emails I managed to get the charges down to £140 (still £110 too much). At this point they said to accept it or consult a deposit agency where they threatened to charge the full £340. Not happy, will not rent with them again and would not recommend them to anyone! Avoid at all costs!!

Rent: £340

Deposit Returned?: Partially

Kingstons

Go with Kingston if your looking for Mould, Poison, Flooding and Mice!

First problem: Mice
We had multiple sightings of a mouse running through the kitchen and living room. When we emailed Kingston’s about this they sent out a pest controller. They said there was already poison under the kitchen counters which meant that this was an existing problem that the agency was aware of but did not inform us.

Second problem: Drains
The shower drain was constantly blocked despite using cleaning supplies. This led to the bathroom being flooded and caused water to run down the walls into the living room and flooding that room too. Also, the drain the back garden was constantly getting blocked which caused an awful smell to go into the house.

Third problem: Attic Bedroom
Upon moving in there were already water marks on the bedroom wall (which I took pictures of). Throughout the storms the water marks got bigger and rain water actually started to leak from the roof into my room. I emailed Kingston’s who sent out a worker who ‘fixed’ it but then another storm happened and the same thing happened again. This time more workers were sent out and the problem seems to have been resolved, but the water marks are still all over the wall and mould has grown on them. When emailed about this they said they’ll send someone out to repaint (this never happened despite me informing them I have asthma)

  • water damage wet wall mould mold student rent letting cardiff wales kingstons kingston welsh house tenant rights

Would not recommend.

Rent: £310

Deposit returned?: Still living at the hole in question