Bert

Aug 19, 2022

The company is a complete scam

The company is a complete scam, please avoid at all costs as both, the tenant and a property owner. I personally strongly suspect that the reviews here must be fake. I went for a viewing for a whole property to be rented by two people, a room each. They offered to rent the place as it is or pay a bit more to have the kitchen fitted and bills included. We decided to take the place and pay more for them to fit the kitchen. The agent promised a cooker, a washing machine and a fridge. I was a bit skeptical on this, so I asked about it multiple times at different days and intervals, each time we were reassured it will be done. The agent even said they have spoken with their manager and it's all confirmed - the three items will be fitted - no worries at all! He said he'll even try to get the bathroom polished up. Well you can guess what happened next - we paid the holding deposit, said no to other places, and come closer to the move in date, they went back on the word the agent made. The reasons for this warried, the agent said that they changed this as a policy a day before we agreed to rent the place. The next call he said they are only doing this for houses with 4 rooms and on the next call houses with 3 rooms. Whats sad is that the stuff they'd need to fit costs £400-500 in total on Amazon. The real price for them is in the £250-300 range, since they can write off VAT and business expense it. That's basically two weeks license fee for one room. In fact if you account for all the costs, such as referencing any new tenants via 3rd party, reputation damage, agent time and fuel to rent the place out again, I strongly suspect they lose money on not providing these items and losing us as potential tenants. When I spoke with the manager about this, to me, it was clear it's not the first time she's dealing with people complaining about such lies during the viewing process. She started by phrases along the lines of "I have a waiting list for this house", "guardianship isn't for everyone", and progressed all the way to saying that she will put the house back on market right away and we can't have it. Right now, I'm screwed, since I have no place secured to live at and no time left. She knows it and exploits that to get people to rent their run down houses after lying to fit the houses with certain things during the viewing process. EDIT: seeing their response below, their attitude towards how they do business is very clear: they will make mistakes and their customers will pay for it. How dare those customers not accept their explanations! Normal businesses cover their own mistakes, write off a lose and improve their processes. Not Ad Hoc! I must pay for their mishaps! Unbelievable joke. If anyone else runs into a similar issues with them, please instantly report them to "property guardian providers association". This is unacceptable business behavior and their response is a complete joke. EDIT 2: I won't respond here anymore, but I'll just say that I'm happy this is public for people to see what kind of people work at the company. The person is clearly showing a complete lack of empathy and common sense. If the person responding here had a pub, if you'd order a dish and the wrong order came back to you, they'd say "we already explained that the staff is new, we will not bring you what you ordered, eat what we brought". I don't "appear" to have had a bad experience, I literally had the worst experience possible: viewed 10+ places, picked this one due to what was promised, said no to all the other places. Ad Hoc ends up not delivering on what they said and says I can no longer have the place as they'll put it back on the market once I complain to them about this. This is the worst possible behavior imaginable and it's clearly an extremely shady company.