Dear Mike, I am incredibly sorry to read your review and I am sorry that you feel that way. I know we have spoken since and I have agreed with you that a number of mistakes were made however I feel it prudent to address a number of points that you raised as I believe my firm and I have been miss-represented. I have therefore addressed them below. “Just after Christmas we finally received an offer” – The use of finally here infers that it took a substantial amount of time to secure an offer. In fact it took 37 days, which bearing in mind the property had been marketed by “2 established local estate agents” for a cumulative time of 162 days I believe shows that we had done a very good job. “It was significantly less than our asking price” – The property was marketed at an asking price of £545,000 and the offer that we received and that was subsequently accepted was £530,000. This offer constitutes 97.24% of the asking price which I believe is a fair offer and not significantly less. I will add that with every property sale we strive to get as much as possible. Bearing in mind no offers were received from the other estate agents I believe securing this offer constitutes a reasonable job. “Robert became very difficult to get hold of” – I agree that unfortunately I was not available as much as I would want to be. I discussed this at the time with you (and with all of our clients) that I unfortunately had lost a close family member and therefore would be unavailable for a period of time. Nevertheless I completely understand that this was at a critical time of the sale and therefore it did affect the transaction. I apologised at the time and since. I would like to say again that I am sorry for being difficult to get hold of and I completely understand you not being happy. Regardless of the circumstances, I am not happy with this either, hence my apology and acceptance that this part of the service was below par. “Eventually completed in April” – The transaction as a whole took 12.5 weeks from offer acceptance to completion. Bearing in mind the industry average is 12 weeks I think the use of ‘eventually’ miss-represents the sale process and the aim of my team and I to progress every sale quickly and efficiently. It is also important to note that this sale could have completed sooner but it was requested by yourselves and your buyers for there to be a number of weeks between exchange and completion. “Paid nearly £5,000 for the privilege” – I would like to stress that our actual fee was £3,975 plus vat. I am proud that at Laurels we offer a cost-effective service and I would like to highlight that our fee was still significantly less than you would have been charged by the two other established estate agents had they sold it.. “We never met our buyers, which I found very strange” – This is not unusual in the industry and in fact at Laurels we actually do aim to have our buyers and sellers meet at some point, because we believe it gives a personal touch. Obviously in this case it did not happen but at no stage did we block this. Put simply, it just didn’t happen because of timings etc. Finally I would like to stress that I firmly believe that I and Laurels could have improved upon the service that we provided you and we have made a number of changes/improvements to ensure that we do in future. I understand the frustration about the chain issue at the end however as I said at the time we verified their situation and we can only go on what we are told by other estate agents. Nevertheless I am sorry for the mistakes made but I do firmly believe that there were also many positives about our service. Kind Regards Robert Muat Managing Director Laurels Estate Agents