Alex

May 15, 2024

Awful customer service

I have had 2 experiences with Bridges. Both of which were overwhelmingly negative. My first contact was around 15 months ago for a rented property. We viewed the property and decided to go ahead with proceeding as it ticked all of the boxes. I spent the next week chasing up the estate agent asking for updates about whether we were going to be considered as we needed to move out of our current accommodation within the next few weeks. After upwards of 10 calls to bridges and being told ‘the lenders are still considering you and 1 other party’ , I was eventually told by someone that I had never spoken to before that the landlord had decided to go with someone who had offered to pay 1 year upfront, something which they had known about 5 days prior and we were in fact never in the running for the property. We then managed to secure another rental through bridges. On the day that we picked up the keys we had to travel out of area to pick them up. When we arrived at Bridges we were told that no one had informed the staff at the branch that we were due to pick up any keys and we had to wait for the staff to call the Hook branch to confirm that we were actually able to pick the keys up. Since being in the property it has been largely pain free and any issues I have just gone through directly to the landlord. My second and most recent experience with Bridges has been through the attempted purchase of a property. During this time I have been in contact with 4 different estate agents all of which are based at different branches. Correspondence with them has been difficult as I would ask a question to 1 person, only for that question not to be passed on to the other person and me having to go through the process again of trying to get an answer on something (most of the time I didn’t get an answer and I was told ‘I will find out and get back to you’) I also put in concerns about some issues that came up in the survey and asked that the seller either address them or consider a reduction in asking price so that we could address them when we moved into the property. I raised this 3 weeks ago and had been told multiple times by Bridges ‘I will get back to you on X date’ never happened. After 8 weeks with very limited communication and when I did get any correspondence, it was ‘things are going as planned’. I decided to take matters into my own hands as our solicitors had received no information back from the sellers solicitors (something which I had raised to the move coordinator multiple times). I chased the branch manager, Kevin, to find out what was going on. After he spoke to one of the sellers he found out there there was a dispute between the 2 sellers and that it didn’t look likely that it would be rectified. So after 2 months of believing our purchase would go through, it transpired that there had been an issue that had been ongoing for months and this hadn’t been picked up. I question why correspondence only went through 1 of the sellers, as this was picked up as soon as contact was made with the second seller. After a further conversation with Bridges about where we go from there, I was told to ‘just let it go’ and also ‘the sellers other property sale is completing today’. Both statements are really not helpful the day of hearing of your property purchase falling through. I then didn’t receive any further correspondence from them until 2 weeks later, where we finally got it in writing that the sale had been cancelled. This process cost us over £2000 and was deeply frustrating. I have very little nice things to say about this company, from awful viewings whereby the estate agent knew nothing about the property, to poor processes of liaising with the sellers to ascertain what was causing the delay. Since this, we have found a property that we love and have nearly completed the purchase of this with an estate agents that we have found to be incredibly helpful and person centred. Quite the opposite of what my partner and I have experienced with Bridges.