Do not use Clarke Mews for lettings

I have never been so appalled at a service I have received from a lettings agent. We rented a property from the agents 2004/2005 and from the very beginning all the staff were rude and unhelpful. Their accounts department had made a mistake and thought we hadnt paid our rent one month but as always it had come out of my account by direct debit so I was unaware of a problem. Within two weeks we had received a letter to say they would be taking us to court over the matter. At no point did they attempt to contact myself by phone to advise me of the matter. I had to go into the branch to resolve the issue and once resolved we received no letter of apology for their mistake. On moving out we had produced all our final bill statements as asked, but were not given our deposit as we had not obtained a form from the council to say we had made all necessary payments. After many weeks of going backwards and forwards we discovered the council could not issue this letter as Clarke Mews had not informed them we had moved out and whenever the council tried to contact Clarke Mews they were unhelpful and wouldnt give a straight answer. Finally once this was resolved (5 months after we had moved out) I received a letter saying they did not have, nor had they ever had our deposits and it was up to us to communicate directly with the landlord to try to get it back. Surely as a letting agents it is their responsibility to ensure our deposit is returned to us and we should not have any direct contact with the landlord, which also begs the question why did we pay agents fees if we are dealing with a private landlord directly. The final outcome of this saga is yet to be discovered but one thing is for sure, I will never use Clarke Mews for anything ever again.

Laura Slight - 10/03/2006 | report this review