YOUR MOVE in BEDFORD
I would like to make a statement describing: the facts, the upset, inconvenience and financial loss I have incurred using the ‘Your Move’ housing agency for a recent forced home move.
I would like to start from the beginning.
A young Polish family with one 2 year old child and a second one on the way, we were living in a cramped one bedroom flat. At the end of September we made the unavoidable decision to move to a house, as my wife was 5 weeks away from giving birth.
We visited a number of agencies including ‘Your Move’ which had an interesting offer of a home for £600. To our surprise, the agent of Your Move took our details - and said he would inform us when they had a suitable offer - contrary to other agencies that would let us make an appointment to view a property.
A few days later, I received a phone call from Your Move; the agent said that they had a landlord looking for a professional couple. We felt that we met the requirements as we were both working full time and we asked Your Move to inform the landlord of our interest. Within a few days I received another phone call from Your Move with a proposal to view a property on offer for £525. We gladly made an appointment to view the property on Saturday October 8th.
We met the agent, called Mark, at the agreed time. Our first impression on entering the house was one of horror – in our opinion the interior condition was appalling; "there is no way that I would rent this house" I said to Mark. He recanted that the price was £525 which was really cheap as the landlord was also offering the following with the property:
- A fridge and cooker (even confirmed it by telephone),
-new vinyl flooring in the kitchen, hallway and bathroom,
-new blinds,
- make good the big gap around the edge of the kitchen window,
-Have the carpets professionally washed (this was for us, of the upmost importance because these were very dirty and smelly),
-exterior home decorations would be restored,
-access to the shed
-that the house would look and smell clean.
As we were aware that the Your Move agency rates are calculated at market value, we agreed to rent this property on the condition that the above criterions were met. On Monday October 10th, we went to the agency office and paid the £300 administration fee - which was almost double the rate in comparison to other agencies. Although expensive, we thought we were in good hands with these people and so we also agreed to pay an additional £150 deposit because we have a small dog. We felt so confident about the way that Your Move were handling things, we agreed to contact our current agent and give them a month’s notice to quit the flat we were living in.
On Thursday October 13th, Mark called with some bad news; "the landlord cannot afford to supply you with a fridge and cooker unless he raises the rent to £550 (this meant that we would be paying for these white goods over and over again, which could only be described as exploitation) we plainly disagreed with this and reminded the agency of the original agreement. With the impending arrival of our baby, the last thing we wanted were these creeping doubts in our heads. We nervously waited for a response, which came through the door on Tuesday 18th October: Mark had sent a letter explaining that the landlord had advised him that he would have to raise the rent on the property.
As we had already paid a non-returnable deposit of £300, we offered to buy the fridge and cooker ourselves, if the landlord would waive the £150 deposit for our pet dog.
On the following day, Mark told us the landlord was agreeable to this.
We made an appointment on Saturday October 22nd to view the property and to take the measurements to get the right size cooker and a fridge. When we arrived at the house we realised that no improvements had been made yet, we contacted Mark; " are you sure everything will be done on time?" We were then informed that there would be a delay with the flooring and the clearing of the shed.
On October 27th I received a message that some of the improvements had already been made and that there would be some more in a few weeks (the flooring and the shed).
On November 1st, my wife, who was due to give birth, had been to see the doctor, who then booked her into hospital for November 9th for an inducement. I then left a message for Mark regarding the possibility of changing the agreed date of the handover of the property - to November 4th. Mark wasn’t happy, but on the following day he agreed to do this.
On Friday, November 4th, we went to the Your Move office, to sign the contract and take the keys - Mark assured us that the house was ready. We were very happy; we had a new house and a new born baby to look forward to.
The next morning we packed our worldly goods and made our first ‘moving trip’ to our new home....when we arrived we were to experience the shock and horror that we had felt when we originally viewed the property; the house was untouched, not a thing had been done - it seemed that it was in a worse condition than before; it stank of urine, vomit, cigarettes, alcohol etc... You can imagine that that morning we were feeling on top of the world and then...moments later, standing on the doorstep with our 2 year old daughter, we were feeling sick to our stomachs; my wife was close to tears.
Angrily, we drove straight to the agency to speak to Mark who asked us to return in 30 minutes time as he was with a client. When we eventually saw Mark, he told us that the landlord was waiting for us back at the house. We met up with the landlord, who in turn explained the situation to us.
It turned out that the landlord had no intention of making any improvements to the property and that he had informed the agency of this a long while ago. Everything that was promised by Mark was said under false pretences. The landlord and I went to the Your Move agency to try to resolve the problems. Mark said that it had all been a terrible misunderstanding which could be cleared up on Monday with the branch manager. The landlord was really angry, I was really angry. We rearranged the house move for Monday November 7th.
On Saturday November 12th we were due to hand in our keys to our current home; we felt completely and utterly useless, we felt that we had been tricked and abused and totally undermined.
The landlord was very sympathetic with our plight and he wanted to help us; he stated that he was going to break his contract with the agency and make all the promised improvements to the house for the money that we had paid them.
On the following Monday, early in the morning, the landlord called me and said that he had spoken with the branch manager who was in actual fact the brother of Mark. The landlord told me the sad news that if he were to arrange a contract between me and him, and if the agency were to find out it was with this particular property, then they would have the right to sue him for loss of income, as they were not willing to break their contract with him.
That afternoon I went to meet the branch Manager and he coldly gave me an ultimatum: Either we move into this pile of filth or he will give us a full refund and we leave the agency. Would he dare to suggest that I leave my family, on the streets with nowhere to live!!?
A mother looking after a newly born baby and a toddler, living on the streets!!?
I had no choice in the matter; I would have to clean it up the best I could. He said he would compensate us for the cleaning products we used, as a small gesture of goodwill and that the landlord was planning to replace the flooring as promised.
We thanked him for his lame offer and we went to Tesco and Home base. We rented a vacuum washer for £20 and we bought detergent for about £46. We arrived back at the house at roughly 6 pm to start the clean up. 7th November, my wife was six days overdue and we were living on borrowed time. I cleaned up the house until 3 am but the smell and the dirt was so ingrained that not even 11 washes of the carpets made much difference. I was physically drained and we still had to move everything else from our flat. On the 8th of November we made the decision to move the birth one day forward as we still hadn’t finished moving. We were worried for our unborn child as she was already very overdue, thankfully on the 10th November we were finished. I hurriedly drove my wife to the hospital were a few hours later she gave birth to a beautiful healthy daughter ;)
A few days later I went to see Mark at the agency to be compensated for the cleaning equipment. The branch manager reiterated his promise that he would reimburse me just for the detergents. The cost of hiring a vacuum cleaner was deducted, I also asked him to take into consideration 4 days rent (£70) in which we did not have access to the property.
This unprofessional individual remarked that if he were to refund the £70, then the landlord would no longer replace the flooring! Was I speaking to a spoilt child or a businessman!?
In my opinion, the YOUR MOVE agency is COMPLETELY UNPROFESSIONAL, UNETHICAL, WITH NO BUSINESS ACUMEN.
I even wrote a letter to the main office in Southampton; stating that the property was given to me in an un-inhabitable state. The only response I received was that the landlord had cleared the property as was his contractual obligation; laughable.
Since December 8th, I have heard nothing from the landlord or the agency.
None of the agreed criterions have been met and no work has been carried out to do so.
In Conclusion:
-I advise you to seriously consider using this agency in my opinion, because they will not consider you.
-Always ask that they confirm everything in writing; you then have proof in a court of law.
-make sure you check the property over thoroughly, before signing the contract.
-if they can show such disregard to a women who is 9 months pregnant, then they can do it to you too.
If you have had similar experiences can you please share them on our forum. We would also like to receive some happy stories too.
I will keep you informed about my case, thanks for reading and I hope that it will help you to avoid similar problems.
