Home2u

Be warned before getting into bed with these incompetent crooks.

From beginning to end, Home2U’s management of the property I rented was atrocious. Fees on top of fees on top of fees and constant poor communication was the infuriating norm. At times the staff, in particular the branch manager Vino, were condescending and rude, making as little effort as possible to address concerns or actually do their job. Any admin took as long as possible to complete and always required chasing up. Usually they will claim after days of radio silence that they have not received your email and you have to send it again (especially when there are important documents attached). Their main method of communication is by phoning you even if you request communication in writing, presumably so that there is as little evidence as possible of their incompetency.

When marketing the property for new tenants, Home2U frequently entered the property without giving proper notice, often only calling to tell us they would be coming round for a viewing a couple of hours beforehand. At the end of the tenancy they informed us that our deposit would be returned within 10-14 working days of checkout but held onto it for much longer, calling on the 14th day exactly to tell us we had apparently neglected to send some documents relating to the checkout. They lied to our faces and refused to take accountability for not previously informing us that we needed to provide these specific documents before they would return the deposit. It took another week of constant chasing up for them to return it.

Worst experience ever with a business.

Alexa, play Send in the Clowns by Stephen Sondheim.

Why do people take an instant dislike to estate agents?

To save time.

Although in our case, it really took no time at all, if it were possible to give 0 stars for anything, this my friends, would be it.
Having just come off the back of a truly torrid time being a tenant at a house letted by Homes2U, the estate agency that really, shows its lack of care from the get go, its own name declines to use whole words, an apt comparison to their employees lack of effort on a day to day basis.

This review will outline the horrendous experience myself and my housemates have endured the last year in having to deal with these unscrupulous “estate agents” who reminded me more of dodgy window salesmen from the 1970s, like the ones depicted on the BBC’s funnily enough COMEDY series ‘White Gold’ if you wish for a reference. Our experience in itself was a comedy of sorts ironically enough, but then again it seemed like we were part of a dragged out episode of crime-watch dealing with this company and it’s money grabbing schemes for the past 12 months.

As a final year student at university and still relatively inexperienced in renting a property, I feel cheated, conned, used... (you get the picture.) the lack of care for their customers was more evident than anything, no decent communication whatsoever with us, and constant lies. They would insist on calling you as their only way of communication, probably to hide any evidence of their incompetence, and had a very condescending way of dealing with us as their customers, the way they’d talk to us was atrocious, completely disrespectful the idea of customer service a long forgotten aspect of their company policy it seems.

One example of the lack of care for us as tenants is an incident in which one of my housemates had a quite terrifying encounter with a potential break in, of which he ended up having to deal with himself, and when rightly taking the issue of our security in the house to them after the event, they brushed it off as they would with all issues we brought them and said they’d “speak to the landlord” they may as well have told us they were speaking to their company fairy godmother, as whenever we interacted with the landlord he had no idea about any of the goings on, unless it was plumbing, then we would have the landlord arrive at 4 or 5 o clock in the morning to wake us all up bright and early for our day as he would fix our broken toilet seat, or our leaking pipes, banging away with his hammer while the birds were chirping in the brisk morning air, what a way to start your day!

On a more serious note, each and every employee at the branch starting at the very top with manager, have the worst service imaginable, nothing but condescending when dealing with you in person or on the phone.
Their money grabbing attitude, hand in hand with said lack in communication and care for us as tenants, as a whole my experience was as I have pointed out, terrible. and even on our way out of the property, they held our deposit money longer than the 14 days they had promised, leaving me paranoid as I waited for them to return my money, when eventually received though, I did not receive all of it anyway, at every opportunity they attempted to charge fee on top of fee, starting with a £125 “check out fee” in the contract for the property, of which I have a complete lack of understanding about, as you may suggest it would be used by the agency to get a cleaner to ready the property for the next tenants, but no, a £40 fee as well as that was used for a “cleaner” despite us leaving the house tidier than the condition we moved in at, we even added furniture to one room, arguably adding to the house before we departed, and yet all four of us lost out on our own money which is utterly ridiculous.

As I said at the top of this review, if it were possible to give no stars at all, I would do.
How they get away with such shenanigans beats me, and I would wholeheartedly advise you to avoid this specific estate agency like the plague
Do not engage with these estate agents, I repeat. DO NOT ENGAGE.

I wish I had paid attention to the bad reviews before doing business with home2u and our landlord. We had several issues with our house, and each was addressed more unprofessionally than the last.

- We had a mouse and were told we would be reimbursed for an exterminator. The council exterminator visited, but the agency still sent their own guy without warning. He dug up several floorboards, some near our gas meter. We had to tell him to leave after an hour as we had prior commitments. He showed up another day (unannounced again) to roughly nail a board over the hole in the floor he had left uncovered.

- We had two gas leaks in two months. The first time, emergency gas services diagnosed the problem (and found an extremely out-of-date gas certificate) and the agency "fixed" it. A couple months later we smelled gas again. The agency didn't believe us, but the council detected fumes in the same area the mouse guy had taken up floorboards the month prior.

- Our worst experience was our broken boiler. A couple months into the lease, we reported high pressure to our agent, Alex. We requested a boiler engineer to look at it. The landlord showed up with his handyman who had come once before to do odd jobs. One housemate said we weren't comfortable with him doing the work if he wasn't certified. The handyman furiously stormed out of the house, the landlord went after him in a huff, and the agency was horrendously rude when we called to explain the situation. After yelling at my housemate, they revealed that Alex had led them to believe it was a minor issue that only required a few tweaks. They told us he, their employee and our assigned agent, couldn't be trusted to relay information, and that we should email the agency directly from then on.

The boiler was never fixed properly and broke six more times over the next couple months. By halfway through our lease, it would break every week. Each time, the same unreliable plumber would come out (sometimes unannounced or 24 hrs later than scheduled), tweak it, and leave. We'd try to use it, the pressure would go awry again, and the process would repeat. We asked for space heaters for one incident during winter and needed to clarify that one wouldn't be sufficient for four bedrooms. The next time we needed heaters, they claimed we "took too long" to return them the last time, even though we had returned them within 24 hours of them emailing. At its worst, we were left without heat or hot water for four days because the plumber forgot to come, then couldn't figure out the problem.

- Communication was quite difficult, although Uma was generally responsive over email. We made sure two or more of us were home whenever someone came around, as we felt patronized, unsafe, and disbelieved at times. It's one thing for an agency/landlord to be less than perfect. It's another thing for heat, hot water, and having problems addressed to feel like a privilege. The lack of professionalism from the agency, combined with the landlord turning a blind eye to our unsafe living conditions, were appalling. I would never recommend this agency.

We recently purchased a property that Home2u were the sole agents for. They were always very accommodating with arranging visits for either us as buyers or for our potential builders and surveyors. We dealt mainly will Neel who was always quick to respond via text or phone and was very solution focused. Would recommend!

home2u is very professional agent who dealt with my friend's sale perfectly. I would highly recommend them. Viewings were problem free, the agents in the office found me a buyer very quickly... and they negotiated a good price.
I will highly recommend them for any seller.
1

DO NOT USE THIS ESTATE AGENCY

It started when we moved in. We had been informed that the house would be professionally cleaned before moving in. This was not the case. The house was dirty. Worst of all was the kitchen. All of the cabinets had food caked on them, the drawers were disgusting, and the counters were sticky, and the refrigerators smelled and had food spilled in them. It took two days to clean and bleach the kitchen to a livable standard. This should have been a red flag.

Shortly into our tenancy, we smelled gas. A gas engineer came out and found the problem, along with an out of date gas certificate, and fixed it. At the same time, we asked him about our boiler because the pressure was worryingly high. He told us to turn it off immediately, put a giant “DO NOT USE” sticker on it, and told us to get a boiler engineer. We called our agent, Alex, and he informed us that someone would be sent. It was the landlord and his handyman who appeared. I remembered the handyman from some small fixes he made and so I didn’t think he was a boiler engineer. I told my housemates and we agreed that we were uncomfortable with a non-certified person trying to fix it. One of my housemates asked the handyman for his certification and he stormed out followed by the landlord. She ended up getting yelled at by the agency for this. They told us that Alex had told them it was a minor issue, even though we told Alex how serious the gas engineer told us it was. The agency said that we couldn’t trust Alex to relay messages. Alex, our assigned agent whose job it is as our go-between between us and the agency couldn’t be trusted to do his job. Not to mention he was frequently on vacation and unavailable when there were major issues. The next day an actual plumber showed up, though this plumber will make frequent useless appearances throughout the tenancy, and temporarily fixed the problem.

The boiler would continue to have pressure issues weekly.

Our next issue was a mouse. We were told we would be reimbursed for an exterminator so we had the council to come out. The council exterminator left us with his recommendations which we passed on to Alex. The agency sent a random man out to “fix” the problem without letting us know ahead of time. He tore up the floorboards in our kitchen and was halfway through tearing up the floorboards in a closet when we had to ask him to leave due to other commitments. He came back a few weeks later and hastily nailed a board on top of the holes he made.

Shortly after the “exterminator’s” visit, we started to smell gas again. Right where he had ripped up the floor. It’s hard to imagine this was a coincidence.

In December, the boiler broke again and we were left without heat and hot water for 4 days. We asked the agency for space heaters. They were going to provide us with one. After some back and forth, we were able to get 4 because there were 4 of us and 4 rooms. The same plumber was sent and he “fixed” it.

It went out again just over a week later. The plumber came and “fixed” it again. We kept having pressure issues for the remainder of our tenancy. It would go dangerously high, so high that we didn’t feel comfortable leaving the boiler on when we were not there or at night.

Another time we lost the heat for a couple of days we asked the agency for heaters again. They refused to give them to us because we took too long to return the heaters last time.

Every time we had to interact with this agency, they were extremely condescending. They tried to charge illegal fees in the lease. It became easier to live with the problems in the house because interacting with the agency was impossible. Whenever the agency would send someone, we made sure to have two of us around because we felt patronized, unsafe, and disbelieved.

This agency lacks professionalism, the landlord did not care that his tenants were living in unsafe conditions, and our assigned agent couldn’t be trusted to do his job. I do not recommend this agency to anyone.

Booked in for a viewing for a property. The day of the viewing comes and I check the listing and they have completely changed the property, images are not the same and they’re excuse was “their probably updated images” how can it be updated images when it’s a completely different house? Thank god I noticed that before getting on the train all the way there

We had very bitter and unforgettable worse experience by them. Darren visited the house without prior notice and entered into the rooms without our permission. He finds several ways to reduce the deposit money even he charged us for check-out £300. I do not want to rate them 1 but there is no zero