Treat Your Customers Right! | Lillywhite Home Renovations

Lillywhite were asked to take over management of a 2 bed property in Stoke Newington from an under performing high street letting agent.
I met with the landlord today at the property to do an inspection and to see what repairs the tenants needed doing and was told horror stories by the landlord of the previous agent.
Firstly they had wrongly advertised that there was a dishwasher in the property, when clearly there wasn’t. Once the new tenants had moved in they requested a dish washer as they had signed the tenancy on the belief that a dish washer was there. The agent admitted a mistake but asked the landlord to purchase a dishwasher. He reluctantly agreed and send the agent the money for a new dishwasher. He never ever received an invoice for the dishwasher. The tenants then complained that the dishwasher did not work. The agent arranged for the manufacturer to send out one of their repair guys who said it was the electrics in the flat. The landlord has just had an Electrical Report carried out and it stated that all the electrics were fine. We visited the property today and the dishwasher is now a Sharp one, when a Hotpoint one was installed in the first place and he had a letter from Hotpoint the original dishwasher manufacturer asking for payment of a call out fee as their original inspection found it was the electrics and not the dishwasher, which clearly was not the case as the agent then replaced the dishwasher for another one, which makes you wonder where they bought the first dishwasher from originally.
The landlord has told them that at the end of his contract next week he does not want them to manage the property no more, to which they have told him if he wants to keep the tenants on then he has to pay them £500 + VAT. But they owe him more than that in rent, and won`t take it out of the rent. They have said the tenants have to leave the property if he doesn’t pay them this fee and even have cheekily put up a TO LET board outside his property when he has clearly told them he does not want to use their services anymore!
They are also refusing to take his calls and not answering his emails as he wants his keys back to the property.
They also tried to charge him £150 to fit a new £10 smoke alarm, have not responded to tenant claims of a leak in the bathroom which has now caused damage to the bathroom, the list goes on.
No wonder the landlord who lives abroad contacted us to take over the management and was particularly interested in our service as we carry out all our own maintenance in house.
Lesson to be learnt here is treat your customers right and they will keep coming back to you.
I am shocked that such a prestigious high street establishment treat their landlords this way.
The future is bright, the future is Lillywhite….