Connells Reviews 

I was contacted by an agent who offered to act as a broker to help me secure mortgage approval. From the very beginning, I made it absolutely clear that I would not pay any fee until the lender had confirmed that my mortgage was approved.

Despite this, Mr. Wahid Hussain, of 2 Temple Street, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, HP20 2RH, acted dishonestly. I had expressly stated that no payment should be taken if the lender had not approved the loan after reviewing all my documents. He understood my conditions but misled me, taking fees in advance at the application stage rather than after the process was complete, as agreed.

I provided my card details solely for the purpose of processing payment after approval, yet he charged my account immediately without authorisation. As soon as I noticed, I requested a refund. They refused, claiming the matter had to be “escalated to their director,” which confirmed to me that I had been scammed.

I immediately reported the matter to both my bank and the police as fraud.

Mr. Hussain falsely assured me that Halifax had accepted my application and that I should not worry. However, when I attended in person today by his request, after driving 32 miles, he switched to NatWest, despite never telling me this by email or phone. Even worse, I had already been rejected previously by NatWest. Today was supposed to be the day I signed the papers for the Halifax application, not to start again with another lender.

This behaviour shows a clear pattern of dishonesty and deliberate misrepresentation.

I share this so others are not deceived. Always be extremely cautious if a broker asks you to sign documents in person or demands upfront fees before you have official confirmation from the lender.

P.S. At the bottom of one of my emails, you will see Mr. Hussain confirmed Halifax had approved my application. Yet today he admitted that was false, wasting my time, money, and trust.

Grace cross sales negotiator was very professional throughout the sale of my property and went above and beyond

Connells warndon villages worcester, all over you to sell, we sold and our buyers buyer pulled out, no one told us, lost our onward purchase (which i found out through another estate agent) resold which we were only aware of when my buyer turned up to tell us as we needed to find a house! re brought and throughout the whole experience did not hear off them once! My buyers estate agent did all the chasing (Hills worcester-amazing)

Don't listen to the customer or even what the law states even if your the paying customer.
After 5 months of constant false promises chasing 5 times a week every week and not being listened to at all not one bit decided to go elsewhere.
So if you don't want your house sold no interest no hopes no chasing not being listened to not following potential buyers then go until then avoid at all costs wish I did!

Connells Basingstoke - avoid.
Disgraceful service, particularly from the manager of Connells, Broadmere branch. I feel very sorry for the sellers that they are meant to look after. Don’t waste your time! There are much better estate agents in Basingstoke.

Very bad decision to deal with this company,bad management, bad agency, bad communication, bad landlords,thay gonna create a very bad circumstances because they won't inform you of any change or charges. Only one word disgraceful 😔

Aidan and the team at Horley branch was fantastic throughout my house purchase. They were always very responsive and handled my endless queries with patience and professionalism. Their support made the whole process much smoother, and I really appreciated how approachable and helpful they were at every stage. I’d highly recommend them to anyone buying a new home.

Natalia and Stew

Connells Tunbridge Wells - If you are here hopefully I can share this with you so that it helps you consider your next actions.

Avoid Connells at all cost - Gazumping is alive and well with them and they seem to actively support it too. My levels of rage and frustration at them is quite frankly off the scale.

Wont throw any individual under the bus here but their working practices and their level of engagement and updates are shambolic.

Just avoid them - there are plenty of better Estate Agents out there

Extremely poor, lazy and amateurish. It's hard to know where to start but I suppose we should have been wary when our initial documents arrived with my name spelt wrongly. When I queried this, I was told it didn't matter. Call me old fashioned but I like my name spelt correctly - especially on legal documents!? Emails were often full of mistakes and the branch manager even told me that the 'bass rate' had been cut, 3 hours before the announcement had been made - psychic apparently.
Fast forward to 7 months later and we only had 9 viewings, of which they could only get feedback from 5 people. I had to chase them constantly for this and nobody had the decency to phone me in the whole time we had the property on with them.
They offered no suggestions to help sell the property and just kept pressuring us to slash the price which we felt was extremely lazy.
Several viewings were unaccompanied as they didn't have any staff free.
They tie you in to a 6 month contract and put in no effort to sell the property. Even when you cancel, you still then have to wait another 28 days for no good reason. Would not recommend to anyone.

I have had the most terrible time with O’Connells. They forced me to use KeySafe, a company I found out later to be struck off by the FCA and not regulated. I am not internet savvy & found it stressful. Either that or I pay 12 months rent up front for my granddaughter. I capitulated & allowed a year’s scrutiny of my bank (twice for some reason). Six months bank statements, savings accounts, tax info, P60s, ISAs, passport, bills and more. I sent it all to them but they wanted specific documents, I did that too. They demanded it in Digital format & PDF files. I was exhausted, I told them I felt blackmailed & cohersed as I got regular Final Notice warnings that I wasn’t getting the info out quickly enough. They took umbrage & made me feel small, I apologised if I’d upset them and asked for help as my granddaughter was due to move in next week. Finally they accused me of lying that I didn’t know the internet & blocked me meaning my granddaughter will be homeless next week, I am devastated. I am only the guarantor and they treat me like this. They deny hearing any other complaint but mine, boasted O’Connels were best & biggest estate agent,

Check out KeySafe, articles relating to it, the FCA, Reddit platform connects etc, lots of unhappiness out there about O’Connells & KeySafe

If I could have given no stars that’s what I would have done.

I had the misfortune to use Connells Central Birmingham office to sell 2 flats.I just wish I had read their customer reviews prior.

To say their communication and customer service is poor is an understatement. They rarely answer the office phone, if you leave a message they still wont return your call. If you email... yes you've guessed they still wont reply. They did manage to sell one flat, but I couldn't get the other off their books quickly enough.
Further, they agree a fixed price, then add ATM fees once sold, most estate agents take this as part of the fixed fee! Another "sharp" practice by the agents that were the subject of a Panorama program recently.
If you want an estate agent who cares about their clients move on. I would never recommend this company.

1st Floor Carina House Sunrise Parkway, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK14 6LS
Tel:01525 213723
I don’t usually write negative reviews, and I want to be clear that this isn’t about naming or shaming any individual. However, my experience with Connells’ mortgage advisory service has been deeply frustrating and disappointing.

When I first took out a mortgage 5 years back through Connells, I was charged a £500 fee with the assurance that I wouldn’t need to pay any further advisory fees for life. Fast forward to my recent remortgage, and I was unexpectedly hit with a £150 non-refundable documentation fee, contrary to the earlier promise. Most of the other advisors do not charge any documentation fees or advice fees like L&C Mortgages, Adept Mortgages, etc. When I questioned it, I was told the cost was non-refundable.

To make matters worse, I decided to shop around and found another mortgage advisor who didn’t charge me a single penny. He secured me a better rate, with no documentation fees, no hidden costs, and a far smoother process.

This experience has left me feeling that Connells’ mortgage advisory service is overpriced and not as competitive as they claim. I’m not convinced they offer access to the whole of the market, and based on my experience, there are certainly better, more transparent advisors out there.

I would strongly urge others to compare options before committing. Some professionals deliver better value without the unnecessary fees. Avoid Connellsgroup for Mortgage services.

I was with an independent letting company for 10 years and was reasonably happy with the service, then, out of the blue, I got an e-mail telling me they had sold the company to Connells at Torquay. Having checked the Connells website, I saw that their monthly management charge was 7% higher than I was currently paying, so immediately gave my 3 months notice to leave (as, I suspect, many others did). The changeover from one company to the other was very rough and it was difficult to get a response through out. There were only a few days left on the contract left after the final payment from my tenant but Connells deducted the full monthly fee and, so far, have not refunded the outstanding amount. The BBC programme from 14th July 2025 says it all...

Terrible experience from Connells Dudley Branch

The sales person turned up with a very convincing pitch, gave us a great high selling figure with what seemed legit background evidence, but once we had signed up with them to sell our house they very quickly started to ask us to reduce the cost,

we only seemed to get the very occasional viewing and these were mostly dependent on the buyer seeing or going through the Connells mortgage adviser.

as soon as we swapped to another company to sell our house it sold (at a more realistic price) quickly,

I personally would not recommend this company.

Landlords, look elsewhere! Rent collection works, but everything else with Connells Property Management has been a shambles. I experienced falsified inspection reports, requests to approve unlawful actions, ignored rent reviews for over a decade, questionable inventory and reference practices and unauthorised spending. Communication broke down to the point tenants dealt with me directly, making Connells fees a waste of money.

If I could give 0 stars I would. Stay well clear of the Winton, Bournemouth branch. Our letting agent didn’t have clue about the property we were looking to rent - when we had further questions about the property, it was ignored or palmed off with wishy washy comments. We went weeks without useful communication regarding our tenancy agreement then right before we were about to sign said tenancy agreement they ‘realised’ the price was going to be £100 more expensive per month. Utterly disgusting handling of the whole process and the sooner this business goes under, the better.

Oh my gosh they deserve 0 stars, what a complete rubbish of a company

We requested a valuation for our shared ownership flat, to sell it, it was very urgent for us to receive it, they came, literally spent 2 minutes in the flat only to send me this ridiculous report showing the value of the flat is Zero, and claiming that it was to remortgage even though I specifically said it was to sell the flat, I emailed them they never replied so I got another valuation with another company, days later they replied saying that because of The cladding we needed an EWS1 as the cladding was dangerously, it’s a brand new building! We have the EWS1 form, they refused to amend the report or refund the money, this company is a disgrace, AVOID!!!!!!!

By the time you manage to get a reply from these estate agents, the property you are enquiring about has already had an offer accepted. Horrendous service. Had to chase them three times before getting a reply. Then they say the earliest you can view is 4 days after the call to then on the day be called to say the property has had an offer accepted. Shocking service.

Highly unprofessional branch manager at Connells Hitchin (Paul), who resorted to bully mentality and refused to deal with us when things didn’t go in his favour. He was pushing for us to go with a specific buyer because he was selling their house as well (meaning he would get double commission - obvious conflict of interest here which we saw straight away). When we ultimately decided to go with a higher offer from a different buyer, he shouted at us down the phone (clearly angry because it meant he loses the potential commission of the other house) and said he did not want to deal with us for the rest of the transaction. When we had to call the office for the team’s support, he would pick up the phone and immediately cut us off, then get someone more junior to call us back. Utterly disgusting behaviour especially as they would still be getting commission from the sale of our house. The more junior agents are great though and hopefully they never pick up their manager’s unacceptable behaviour and deserve to work for a better leader.

If I could give less than 1 star. I would. Literally the most incompetent surveyors you could imagine. They made an obvious error on their report which resulted in the sale of our property falling through. Wouldn’t discuss anything with me, had zero interest in investigating my complaint and concerns. They have caused a huge amount of emotional distress and you should do everything you possibly can to avoid them.