Complaint about Estate Agent ignored - Where do I go from here?

[stunning101]

Hi All,

 

We have a pending court case with our LL for the deposit of our old property that we let off him. He and the Agent acting badly during the end of our tenancy and I have proof that the Agent has lied and harassed us to get us to relent the deposit. I am preparing our defense for the court case and sent a letter to the Agent that read this on the 24th of May by recorded delivery:

 

We wish to make a complaint about the conduct of ******.

 

 

1. We have found that you are acting on behalf of our previous landlord in recent court procedures in that you have provided services akin to that of a legal representative as detailed in our letter dated 24th of May 2012.

2. On our leaving of the property we received no written guidance from you about the end of tenancy. This led to a confusing time in which we repeatedly requested an exit survey considering our Landlord’s concerns. This was ignored and your employee ****** made it clear than considering ****** did not manage the property you could not be involved.

3. The supply of a previous signed document being sent to us as an original which you later explained to be an office error. We feel that this practice, along with your recent involvement, leads us to believe that you were never impartial during this process.

4. You rang us repeatedly in the evenings during January during a period our baby was only 1 month old and my husband was on paternity leave. We requested that communication needed to be in written form yet you repeatedly ignored this and continued to telephone us. We found this extremely stressful. You stated in your last communication that you have been trying to call us again during April 2012 despite our repeated requests for all correspondence to be in writing. We have not received these calls. We find these allegations of ignored communication to be untruthful.

5. We requested breakdowns and verification of invoices which you have not supplied and you have informed us that we do not have a right to request this.

6. After one month of trying to resolve this matter we escalated this to the T.D.S which is fair and reasonable thing to do as we had been ignored by the LL evident in the e-mail communication. You informed us that we had annoyed and angered our previous landlord in doing this and that you recommended he choose court action over the T.D.S. This was after allowing the T.D.S five weeks of involvement. This has subsequently delayed and increased costs to all parties involved.

7. You have supplied and worked as an adviser to our previous LL in that you have served the court papers, personally visited the courts and served his Particulars on his behalf. We feel that your involvement in this matter is a conflict of interest.

8. You stated in your last e-mail that you had already supplied the Particulars on his behalf and along with this had contacted us to make sure we had received this. We ask for proof of this as the method of service of this document must either be by recorded delivery or hand delivered according to CPR Part 7.5. We consider this to be an attempt to ‘blacken’ our character in front of the courts and that you are acting without integrity.

9. We feel that your involvement and actions have compromised your duty of care toward us as previous tenants. By acting on behalf of the LL we have consistently felt pressurized into giving up our deposit without clarified reason on 219 Seymour Avenue.

10. We never had a response to our last communication dated 18th of January 2012.

 

 

Could you please process this complaint via your internal complaints procedure along with confirming which membership you hold either with the Members of The Property Ombudsman (TPO) scheme or the Members of the Surveyors Ombudsman Service (SOS).

 

 

Yours Sincerely

This, although signed for, has been totally ignored which to be honest is in keeping with the poor practice of this small Agent. I know through my own research that they are part of the S.O.S and wondered where I could take this complaint from here. Do I have an option to take them to court for malpractice or negligence?

[Steve__M]

I think you are under a misconception.

 

A letting agent is an agent of the landlord, and does the landlord's bidding.

 

A letting agent is not beholden to the tenant other than to do what the landlord has agreed be done.

 

A letting agent is not impartial even if at times agents will attempt to be impartial (eg. by getting independent companies to conduct checkin and checkout inventories).

 

So you should, in this case, see the letting agent and landlord as one and the same. If you have a complaint about the behaviour of the letting agent in terms of its failure to meet standards set by any ombudsma it is associated with, then these are separate issues that do not affect your grievance with your LL.

 

Hopefully, understanding the separation of these two issues will help you clarify your complaints.

[stunning101]

We agree with your statements and were aware of the above points you have made. We were trying to make the point that the letting agent involved tried to persuade us that they were indeed completely impartial and were endeavoring to find a fair resolution to our dispute. At every juncture of our communication with said agent we made our feelings known that we thought them to be representing the interests of the landlord given their vested interests.

 

The reasons we are angry with said agents is their attempts to mislead us, their lying to the courts which can be proven via written evidence and their forging of a document with our signature again provable in court.

Edited June 19, 2012 by MARTIN3030

[MARTIN3030]

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[stunning101]

I apologize I copied from my e-mail communication his complete name and did not mean it to be a link. I gained his information on the thread that was talking about the S.O.S and where people got with complaining. As I understand it not many have been unsuccessful using this complaint process and now knowing what they do regret not taking it to a small claims court as once you complain via a Ombudsman body and have their decision then it's very hard to get anywhere in court. I feel that we have a valid case as their actions have been dishonest and illegal.