Awful check out experience
I am reporting BHHS Marylebone branch to the ombudsman and am taking the unwarranted check-out charge to dispute resolution.
I had a truly awful check out experience as a tenant, which showed a company who clearly is trying to take money from tenants during checkout. They overcharged me £250 and I suspect that I am not the only tenant with this experience. Furthermore, the air quality is dangerously bad in the flat. I strongly advise anyone to avoid using BHHS as a property manager.
First, I read the check out procedure carefully. I had to professionally clean the flat and the carpet (albeit not steamed clean). I hired a company with good reviews who also said that they can quickly come back if there are any complaints.
Then BHHS Marylebone, several days after receiving the check out report, tells me that the flat was not perfectly clean. This happened around noon. I quickly responded that the company I paid can quickly come back and resolve any issues. On the pictures, the work was quite minor. The cleaning company confirmed this. However, Michael at BHHS refused to reply to them and insisted on using another company. It was bizarre that he ignored them persistently.
To me it seemed obvious that he wanted to use another company - I don’t know the motivation behind this but they kept on referring to this company before moving out. The company I used is well established and could have come back. He simply ignored them and hired another cleaning company to clean up there and charged me £250 for it. He did this despite several emails from me (and the professional cleaning company that I used) confirming that this can be resolved quickly. He clearly wanted to use another professional firm - but I don’t understand his reason for this.
I suspect that they do this to other tenants too. In essence, we were stolen £250 for something which the cleaning company could have promptly fixed that we hired.
Furthermore, for weeks before moving out I told them that the air quality in the flat is extremely bad. We had an air quality measured that confirmed that. I think it comes from a very old carpet which also had carpet moth. We used to sleep really poorly and have bad allergies in the old flat and this has now disappeared in the new house. We told BHHS about the terrible air quality but I doubt that they have shared my concerns with the new tenants.
Thus be careful with BHHS, especially the Marylebone branch.