Castles Estate Agents - Coventry

AVOID THESE JOKERS

I am a landlord and use castles to manage my property well they are all an absolute disgrace and the service is appalling

There is never anybody in the office they never return your calls or emails

TERENCE BROWN lettings manager needs sacking ASAP how can these people get away with treating people like this

Surely there must be someone we can contact to report these people

They are not forwarding any rent money to me and haven't done for the last 5 months

When I do finally speak to someone they say my property needed work done to it but no invoice was produced for almost 7 weeks from start of the work

My tenant left the property in a mess and is responsible for paying for any damages she caused but until 3 months have passed they said they are not allowed to use her deposit for the work so are withholding all my rent money until it's all paid but have still not sent me an invoice for any of the work the tenant is responsible for

Is there anybody out there that can shed some light on this please before I contact my solicitor again

AVOID THIS AGENT AT ALL COSTS - LANDLORDS

I Had a property with this agency many years but the recent service I have received is borderline disgraceful , phone calls are never returned , owners of the business are always in meetings , I was in their office today and was told no one in management was available to speak to for at least a week !!! They withhold client money for bills that they have not invoiced me for ....... The staff are about as competent as a chocolate teapot , AVOID AT ALL COSTS AND ONLY USE AN ARLA REGISTERED AGENT WHICH CASTLES ARE NOT.

I used them for a lettings only plus deposit protection scheme in December last year. Things went smoothly for the most part and they found me tenants.

However, being a let only service I engaged them for I was surprised to receive a letter from them today giving me 3 options- a)start a further tenancy agreement with tenants, b)gain possession and remarket or c)simply gain possession of property.

But, also in body of letter it says -'should we not receive this within the next seven days, we shall renew the Tenancy Agreement if required by the current tenants or market the property for re-letting'!!

When I have not engaged them for a managed let, by who's authority are they proposing to evict my tenants or renew the agreement? And who are they to give me 7 days to respond? Surely it is for me to take my business wherever I want. The 3 options given assume I want to carry on working with them and make no mention of the fact that I can opt to not use them at all.

I rang to clarify the contents of the letter as I was not happy with it (I'm going on holiday next week and if I missed the letter what would have happened in 7 days time?). However, I got a very rude and arrogant Mr Suri on the line who said he was the manager. Kept contradicting me about contents of letter and kept glossing over 7 day time limit. When asked on who's authority they would have evicted or renewed the contract if I hadn't responded in 7 days he replied "your authority'. Then kept shouting saying 'what do you want me to do now' Even though I said I hadn't made up my mind and was only calling regarding the letters content he wouldn't listen. So I decide to not work with them any longer- he said "fine, we'll take you off our books' Called back 2 mins later to say he would be returning the tenants deposit back to them and it would be up to me to find another scheme. I paid up for a whole year of the scheme and there are still 2 months left in the term yet he is arbitrarily returning the deposit now.

Very high handed, arrogant and I feel verging on the illegal. Pressure selling at its worst. Will never use again.

KEEP AWAY FROM THIS ESTATE AGENTS! The are absolutely terrible. I am currently still waiting for my deposit back from them and my tenency was up August 10th. 2 weeks ago they confirmed to us that we will be charged for some cleaning, which was £90 (extremely expensive to clean and oven and a fridge!) but we decided to accept as to be honest we wont get any better than this. By the way the flat was dirty when we moved in, and we left it very clean, this included the fridge! They told us to send a confirmation email of this charge with a forwarding address (which I guess was so they could send our cheque to us). However, they phone us to tell us since the cleaners had been in some other things wrong have been discovered in the flat and now they have to talk the the landlord! I find it very hard to believe this landlord exsists, as we never met him or spoke to him by phone or email the entire time we lived there! I have emailed them twice this week, no reply and phoned twice today, four times including my flatmate and they have told us they are waiting to hear from the landlord and he has to decide what happens, as they are just the middle man?! I thought the point of the estate agents is to take care of all this for the landlord? So in conclusion they are awful communicators and try and stall giving deposits back. Never use them.

AND...When you phone them and ask to speak to the agent dealing with your property and you get told they are away from their desk or they are currently unable to talk, this is code for REALLY I AM SITTING AT MY DESK BUT IM A LAZY ESTATE AGENT WHO DOESN'T CARE ABOUT MY TENENTS!

Cliffs: Terrible agency, save yourself some time, look elsewhere.

In detail: (And this isn't even the half of it)

All the way through the process of trying to rent the property for the year there were problems. The staff were extremely unprofessional, were very poor at communicating, lied to us in order to get the sale and seemed to blame everything on the customers.

When they showed my flatmates and I round the property they claimed that everything there was included in the property, only to find on moving in that the washing machine was rented and was not included. They also claimed that one car could fit on the driveway and that parking permits were available for any extra cars to park on the side of the road. No such permits exist meaning that one of my fellow tenants had to park a large distance away from the house. When we confronted castles they claimed that they said nothing about parking permits. They also failed to communicate that every single tenant had to pay the first month of rent before ANYONE moved in. As a result, I drove for 3 hours with all my belongings only for them to refuse to give us the key, despite having payed my share of the rent.

The first day I moved in castles assured us that the property had been cleaned only to find that it hadn't even been hoovered, there were food and drink stains on the table, breadcrumbs all over the freezer, mould in my room behind the desk, and a lot of dead flies on the toilet floor. The house was in an indescribable state, and I felt embarrassed to show my parents what we had decided to live in for the year.

I wish I had found this website sooner to see the other awful reviews. Any other good reviews must have been written by themselves or a friend.

To describe the service in one word: Disgusting.

What the title says and if I could give it 0 star, I would.

House consisted of mould, which we were promised they would get rid of - took MONTHS before they even got someone to look at it. Everything was dusty despite the fact we paid a summer deposit so they could clean up the place (at least surely?!). We were lied to. One of the "lovely" estate agents actually swore at us... because they are THAT professional.

I could go on but it's too painful.

Basically, save yourself the trouble and avoid these people at ALL costs. I'd consider a renting a hotel for the whole year before Castle estate agents.

My partner and I moved into the property in winter. As the year moved into spring and summer, we discovered a disgusting and serious health hazard: that there were flies coming from somewhere in the flat, all the time. This problem became steadily worse until (using an electric flyswatter) we could be killing well over a hundred in a day. In addition, we found mouse droppings and evidence of rats.

Although we called them when the problem was new, and although we repeatedly called them as the problem grew worse, Castles claimed that they could not reach the property's landlord and therefore could authorise no work on the property.

However, in conversation at their office, one of their agents claimed that her son had stayed in the property and had been driven out by "hundreds of them coming out of the drains". Why the flat was rented out again before the problem was resolved can only be put down to gross negligence; I would call it incompetence, but they clearly knew about the problem.

In summer we threatened to move out and pay nothing more to Castles, and gladly present our case in court if they wanted to take the matter further. Within an hour a pest control agent phoned asking about an appointment. When he came, he discovered two gaping holes in the floor under the carpet. The floor had been replaced with chipboard in place of real floorboards and the water entering the foundation space from the mouse-holes underneath it had rotted the chipboard away. These holes in the floor had been expanded by nibbling, and when we investigated a storage cupboard full of the landlord's property we found that it had been nested in for some time by mice.

Castles sent a builder round who said, and I quote, "You live in a terraced house; you've got to expect rats and mice in your property." When the (very helpful) pest-control agent came back he was horrified with this, and between the two of us we blocked off six mouse-holes. We later heard that they were disputing that he had done the work. No agent ever attempted to arrange an appointment to inspect the work.

Having moved in in February, the landlord finally came to do some work on the property in August. The floor was replaced - with more chipboard - and overlaid with tiles. Those flies breeding under the floor were stopped; those coming out of the drains were not.

In December, we were served with an eviction notice and told that if we wanted to stay in the property we would be charged an additional £70+ "administration fee". Upon enquiring, we were told this was standard practice for the company, and that the notice had been issued "automatically".

When we asked if we could stay on in the property, we were told the landlord wanted to move back into the property, having spent some time out of the country.

Yesterday, a FOR RENT sign went up outside, and an advert for the property appeared on Rightmove.

Castles now claim they never told us the property was being re-occupied by the landlord.

Long story short:

> Gross negligence

> Naked profiteering & "automatic eviction"

> Lying to tenants

> Refusing to pay tradesmen