Shoutout to Ollie, top lad!

I have lived in a John Winter house for 2 years now and have had a really good experience. I would recommend them so highly. They are kind, friendly and super helpful. The two properties I’ve stayed in are well kept, clean and cosy homes.

Slightly disappointed with the handling of coronavirus, our house is completely empty and we’ve not had much communication regarding money issues that people may or may not have but that’s a small issue. I am thankful John Winter’s team, especially Ollie the maintenance manager who was always there if we needed him!

Rent: £370

Deposit Returned?: Didn’t have one

🎵 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

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

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

Felix De Giles is a crook.

Felix De Giles is a property owner in Cardiff. He at the time of us dealing with him he rented to Pinnacle Lettings Agency but when we left I think he has transferred some, or possibly all, to Cardiff Student Lettings.

I have written another post about Pinnacle Lettings Agency, Felix was nothing to do with our time in the tenancy, supposedly, he was not managing the tenancy, just the owner – read the below with this in mind.

This man knows absolutely nothing about being a landlord. He would frequently break both the law and general practice, some examples;

  1. He changed the locks without informing us or the lettings agency. the contractors had a key to the our house and we nor the lettings agency knew about.
  2. He would send contractors round to do things that, given a long list of rather emergency things to be done, were not important. These things would not be communicated to us, people would just show up. One of these was putting a large box around our electric meter at 8am – they let themselves in and woke a housemate up.
  3. He uses the cheapest builders that could not be any more cowboy if they rode in on horses firing guns in the air. There was plaster everywhere, paint everywhere, once they left our front door without a lock for a few hours?
  4. When we ultimately complained by putting posters everywhere in the house when people came to view the house, we got a call from him directly giving us advice on how to solve our problems. This advice included ‘never shut your heating off’ (we were on a pay meter) and for him to trying and explain how all the faults in the house were in fact our fault.

There is plenty more information about this if people are dealing with him, or want more knowledge.

I think when we left the council was investigating.

Rent: £270

Deposit Returned?: Yes