Katie Freer

Sep 6, 2018

Whitegate Syston

Where do I begin?! This company is probably the worst I have ever dealt with and I used to be an estate agent! No customer service whatsoever! Taylors initially took on our property to rent out and were taken over by Whitegates. The issues started when Taylors were finding a tenant, the agent dealing with the let was rude and even sent an email which had to be blocked by my IT department for profanity! Needless to say I was not impressed. Then when the initial 6 months came to an end I was advised (after chasing) that the tenant had extended the contract for another 6 months so I assumed everything was ok. The tenant had not extended the contract, the agency had let the tenancy go into a periodic tenancy, they had charged the tenant more rent than agreed, and the customer service level was worse than before. I then complained about the service and the above amongst other points which are too lengthy to go into. After trying to get my complaint across to 3 different members of staff ( all emails were ignored ) I eventually emailed the directors PA who responded pretty much straight away promising to look into the complaint and come back to me with a full response. This never happened, instead I was eventually emailed by a member of senior management. I met up with him in June and we agreed that we could cease management as he agreed we had received bad service. To date I am still trying to sort out issues with the company and the property manager has not transferred the deposit as requested. They have been chasing the wrong tenancy deposit scheme as they thought they had lodged it with DPS when actually it is with TDS, even though the tenancy agreement states the deposit is registered with DPS. I am awaiting a full response on why the estate agents put the rent up without telling us, why the tenancy agreement has gone into a periodic tenancy instead of a fixed term, why it has taken from the end of June when we agreed to cease management I am still chasing this terrible company to wrap things up. I am also waiting for some compensation due to the amount of time and effort I have had to put into managing this property when I have also paid Whitegates to manage it. All they have managed to do is make an entire mess of every single aspect. I am extremely disappointed and after being assured that everything would be sorted I am still waiting. *I have had to re write this review as Whitegates had reported it for containing staff members names. I would like to add that on Google reviews, multiple staff have created fake reviews saying how wonderful Whitegates are. ** 04/10/2018 bearing in mind I have been waiting for the deposit to be transferred since June, which has now finally be done, I have received a statement this morning from the accounts team stating that they have transferred £157.44 into our chosen account. Not the £765.00 James has responded with in this review. What I find laughable is that as soon as you feel you have finalised this complaint, you take to trustpilot in an attempt to clear your name. If you would've come back to us, addressed our issues in the first place and resolved this there would've been no need for the constant to-ing and fro-ing I have had to do and I would never have left a bad review. You agreed at our meeting that the service we received from you has fallen short of what should've been received, you weren't surprised either and made the suggestion that we were not the only ones who had received rubbish service. You wanted to give us the chance to start afresh with the newly branded whitegates and new staff members. The transferring management over since June has been terrible so I am glad we didn't take you up on your offer! either your staff are incompetent or you are. With regards to the email containing profanity, you stated there was nothing you could do when we met up and now, for the purposes of other potential clients reading this review, you are stating you can get this looked into? Come off it! The deposit took months for the right person who was authorised at your end to return it. With regards to the rent increase, you stated this was discussed with our tenant and was acting in our best interests. We never wanted to increase the rent, I think this was merely a way to increase your monthly take as managing agent. Our tenant was told the amount to pay whilst in the office, no discussions of a rent increase, no paperwork NOTHING!