The Property Ombudsman Reviews 402

Very poor service. Wrote a very long and detailed complaint with lots of evidence of 6 months harassment, agent threatening to illegally enter our home and failing to comply to their own complaints process... They found that the agents were allowed to enforce 6 months of interrupting our peaceful living, calling us multiple times a week to arrange viewings, emailing us to complain that two days a week wasn't enough to permit strangers into our home, threatening to enter our home without permission despite us saying we would call the police if they did, and when we complained the estate agency basically said they did not care at all and refused to have an independent review of the complaint... ombudsman only found that they should have taken more care in how they spoke to tenants as they'd caused one of the tenants to become suicidal from stress!! Their offer of £150 compensation is an extremely poor substitute for anything to deter this behaviour in future or to compensate for 6 months of ruined enjoyment of our home and a further 5 months of additional harassment... it took 9 months to get that far and the estate agents refused to hand over documents!
Also submitted evidence that the estate agents claimed to have deleted my data against TPOs own guidelines and the law and they said they couldn't include this.
Absolutely useless, I hope they can issue a review of this judgement as at the moment court seems like the only option to deter criminal estate agents.

What a shamble of Property Ombudsman! They are supposed to be here to help people, yet they do not accept your case, they call you to pontificate on how they cannot do what they should do, then recite all the things you can read online. Anyone knows where Property Ombudsman can be be actioned into some legal action, they really are not doing what they are supposed to do.

I have raised a complaint about an agent. I had evidence ignored by my adjudicator and also had a pitiful penalty proposed where they were found to be culpable. The only way to end this charade is to contact the press and your mp. I plan to do this. Unless action is taken this will continue and others will face the same outcome.

I had waited a long time to get my complaint in sight and resolved, and I had almost given up on TPO. Then a Resolution Officer wrote to me out of the blue and she obtained for me a goodwill award and apology from the property management company. TPO are to me the last authority to take my building manager to account so I hope the timeline to accept and investigate a complaint could be shortened before reaching a resolution. Tenants/Leaseholders' rights should also be reviewed and updated. My complaint was filed with the property management company since January 2024 but they turned a deaf ear. My experience was they were allowed a long time to do their internal investigation but quick to impose charge and penalty without consent or even notice to their tenants/leaseholders.

I wish i can rate Zero.

I filed the complaint since Aug2024, I waited over 6 months and still no progress, no agent pickup the case, then i wrote the first review in trustpilot on Feb2025(over 7 months), and i emailed to the customer and was told the case was escalated. Again, there was still no agent to pick up the case, that means ZERO progress in 10 months. If you count on their services, it is probably time to forget it.

Have to wait a long time to get an adjudicator assigned, and you might not agree fully with the ruling, but TPO are literally the only way to take RMG to account.
The whole leasehold process needs overhauling, but I’m grateful for the diligence of our adjudicator in the interim.

After a Data Protection Subject Access Request I can see The Property Ombudsman wrote to the service management agency. "We have no final response from you on file. We will move to review the case." (Note in fact the service agent had never sent any reply to all four stages of their own complaint request from me the customer).

SIX months later from The Property Ombudsman "Your case is unlikely to succeed and is closed. We will not enter into any further correspondence with you."

It means that any of their companies they are The Ombudsman for can ignore all of the customer's complaints including going through the whole escalation process with the original company and The Property Ombudsman will find that the complaint has no merit or chance of success.

There is no point using The TPOS service if they allow the companies they supposedly make findings on to ignore the customers as the go through the internal complaint process. The TPOS allow them never to issue a final viewpoint letter (or any response) and will rule against you.

It is exactly what I thought. The companies pay The TPOS to judge them. So to keep them paying them they don't judge them and even with bare clear facts in front of them just remove the complaint from The TPOS system.

Update - after the reply from The Property Ombudsman I notice they can reply to TrustPilot reviews within 24 hrs. Yet even after five months of a complaint being in for one of their agents they hadn't got around to make findings on it.

When they say you have a case they should explain why. We waited over 6 months to be rejected. And now we have nothing to help us take our complaint further. Shocking

Please don't dismiss the difficulties I experienced. My letting agents authorized an unsafe gas engineer who ultimately caused irreparable damage to my boiler. Despite clear evidence, the letting agents denied any responsibility, falsely attributing the issue to an aging boiler. After lodging a complaint with the Ombudsman, it took over a year for them to respond, siding with the letting agents despite the evidence I presented. It is difficult to understand how their advisors can justify such decisions. Ultimately, I sought legal advice, and after a year and a half of stress, the letting agents agreed to cover the £3,000 cost to replace the boiler. If you look at any bad letting agents and managing agents they will be subscribed to The Property Ombudsman.

TPOS says they are impartial but it’s the complete opposite as they are funded by the estate agents. They are a toothless tiger who will not bite off the hand that feeds them. They don’t read complaints properly and when you challenge them on that, they gaslight you. It has been a horrendous experience similar to the abusive behaviour from the estate agents. No wonder estate agents freely recommend them. They know TPOS is on their side rather than that of the consumer. The whole industry needs an overhaul. TPOS is not interested. Jobs for life for doing nothing except being seen to take a look at your complaint and then say you don’t have a case. If you have an issue with an estate agent, it’s better to use the small claims process. The fewer people who support the estate agents’ lackey will mean proper redress systems will have to be implemented. They are obnoxious and a complete waste of time.

My family member complained to them about the service received from their letting management company (who took over the letting company they had been with). TPO didn't read the info provided properly and sided with the company (no surprise there when the agent has to pay to be signed up to them I suppose). Frustrating waste of time for us and we thought we had a good case.

My managing agent FirstPort completely ignored my formal complaint so, as per both their website and the Property Ombudsman website I should go to The Property Ombidsman for the agents failure to follow the code. So I did that. In August TPO accepted it was in their scope. I waited since August and now they’re trying say they’re not going to deal with it! This is even contrary to their own stated purpose!

Terrible. They refuse to accept even clear cut evidence and that state they delete everything under GDPR but really to avoid any ability to audit and hold them to account. Totally useless.

Not independent or neutral in any way. Always side with the agent. After all the agents fund them so there is no incentive to be neutral and independent. Be warned.

What a waste of time. Allow estate agents (Naylor Powell Gloucester Docks) to operate unprofessionally and haphazardly! As long as the estate agent makes a reasonable offer they accept. I guess 85% of people giving bad reviews shows exactly who the ombudsman favour! Numbers don’t lie. Also ombudsman do not reply to this message with the usual reply like you are here to help!

We lost £5000 leaving a reservation fee through Andrew Grant. The Property Ombudsman wasn’t interested at all as their very existence is funded by the agents themselves. Reservation fees should not be allowed and are totally unregulated; other people have now complained about Andrew Grant for unfairly retaining reservation fees. This is tantamount to theft with a capital t; how many more people will have to lose thousands of pounds before the The Property Ombudsman actually intervenes. Worcestershire County Court will soon have a fair few cases regarding the agent unfairly keeping people’s money; Andrew Grant are now asking for 0.5% upto £800,000 and 1% over £800,000 so this is a huge amount of money for people to potentially lose. The Property Ombudsman needs to start looking into this properly.

The most unethical company along with estate agents.
The Property Ombudsman delayed our case by 1.5 years just to tell me that it is okay for the estate agents to cheat and scam me.
The government should scrap such an organization which is indirectly financed by the landlords.

This is a ridiculous service not worthy of even one star. As a freehold home owner experiencing the poorest of managing agent behaviours, i.e. a complex but proven lie allegedly supported by legal evidence that was a complete fabrication, TPO was unable to adjudicate as this sort of behaviour fell outside of their remit … and took a year to decide this outcome! A lie coming from a professional body is a big thing and all we ever wanted was for that managing agent, JM /Encore Estates, to be held accountable by a body that might matter to them. My advice to any freeholder on an estate where the managing agent is less than professional … don’t bother going to TPO. It delays any real progress and ultimately protects the agent. Meanwhile, I’ll be writing to my MP to demand why this toothless TPO service is government backed.

I would not rely on the Property Ombudsman service. I am a landlord and had two complaints about an agent. The Ombudsman has taken a year to dismiss one complaint and to ask me for more information concerning the other. I cannot see how the Ombudsman can deal with any complaints when they take an excessively long period to process them.

I have been waiting for them to take action for almost a year. I had a terrible experience with an agent called Abel Estates. If the Ombudsman doesn't do anything agents can get away with anything.

Regarding the response to my review, I did email at the address you give but haven't heard back.

Update: I have now heard back. I wasn't expecting a good response but I wasn't expecting total nonsense either. This company is a disgrace. The estate agent accepted an offer without my consent, then took my house off the market without informing me. I asked them to put it back on and they refused so I had no choice but to go along with the agent they chose for me. Then the buyer didn't get a mortgage so I lost loads of time for nothing.
Also, earlier, I was suspicious about the fact that I was hardly getting any viewings and asked my aunt to pretend to be a prospective buyer and try to make an appointment. She wasn't able to. Loads of other things went wrong as well. I was awarded £100 by the Ombudsman. Morag Clyne was the 'adjudicator'.