Hello Graham and thank you for taking your valuable time, to review us so constructively and honestly, online. Ordinarily, we review and then discuss any critical feedback which we receive, in detail in order that we may learn from it. We then respond as honestly and constructively as we can as we know that a negative review can affect our business, just as much as a positive review can benefit us. We accept that we are not perfect and that everybody makes mistakes, but in this instance though, I’m afraid we need to state the facts so that anyone reading this knows that you are not being entirely factual and that actually you’re simply annoyed with yourself that you wasted your time. You’ve omitted to state to any readers of this review, that you were late to the appointment by nearly half an hour and only made contact with us to tell us, when it was too late. Due to COVID-19 (may I courteously remind you that there’s a global pandemic affecting every single country and human being in the world right now and businesses are having to go to exceptional lengths just to survive) we are spacing our appointments carefully in order that we conduct appointments extremely safely and in-line with government guidelines and we explained to you that because of your late arrival, we would not be able to accommodate you. In fact, we even sent you a text message in advance of your appointment, confirming that we needed you to arrive on time and that if you were unable to do so, that you would notify us in plenty of time. Had you thought to contact us earlier on, we may have been able to rearrange things for you, but you didn’t and you gave us almost no notice - so we couldn’t. You also mention that you had no communication or apology. Hopefully, I can assist here as your memory appears to have evaded you again, as you had a conversation with the manager of another of our offices as your late telephone call was picked up at another office, due to my colleagues at Andover, all being out on appointments or on the ‘phone. She apologised to you for not being able to reschedule due to existing diary commitments. Please therefore, may I suggest that you don’t waste any more of your valuable time in contacting us again, just in case it’s us who are late in responding to you. You probably won’t get a response on this occasion.

Hello John and thank you for your feedback. Obviously we’re disappointed that you’ve only given us one star but we accept your points regarding the amendments needed to our online advertising and we’ve apologised for the mix-up. Clearly we’re pleased that you were happy with everything up to and including the point when the sale was arranged. Whilst positive online reviews can persuade people to use a particular company, negative reviews can do the opposite, so we feel it's important that all the facts are shared. Equally, where errors have been made, it's important that we face the matter and learn from it where we can. You had marketed your property for a year with another estate agent, without success and asked us to take over. After approximately eight weeks, we found a buyer for you, at over the asking price. When you accepted the offer, you agreed to break the chain if necessary and on that basis, your buyer (and the rest of the chain) were able to move forward. Shortly afterwards, you found a property to purchase and decided not to break the chain. As the sale proceeded and Christmas approached, the buyer at the bottom of your chain decided to withdraw from the transaction if things did not happen by Christmas. Pressure was applied by the chain to complete the sale and we feel it’s important to anybody reading this review, that they are aware of these facts. Buying and selling a property can sometimes be stressful and dealing with many different parties - buyers, sellers and solicitors throughout the chain - can be a tricky process for Estate Agents, trying to juggle dates and different needs of the various buyers and sellers involved in a chain of transactions. With hindsight, we clearly but unintentionally, applied too much pressure in this instance and we apologise if you felt pressured. Your chain was about to collapse and you would have lost your sale and we felt we were doing the right thing by you. In fact, we note that at the time of writing, your purchase still hasn't gone through, so had you not broken the chain, then things would clearly have fallen-through. We accept that we could have handled some of the conversations and negotiations more sensitively and we will certainly learn from this. We are of course pleased that your sale has concluded and we wish you the best of luck with your purchase.

Hello Gavin,. I’m sure there is a straightforward explanation for what has gone on but we have no idea who you are. If your message is genuine and you’ll call, we’d like to hear from you. Please call David on (01256) 517994

As you are the partner of the gentleman who has posted the negative review below, my response is exactly the same. It’s very disappointing to receive this type of review but as is often the case, there can be two sides to a story. Criticising businesses on review sites is generally a fair and constructive process and like other businesses, we learn from them and improve. Sometimes though, negative reviews are used when a customer simply doesn’t get their own way. My reply is not intended to suggest that we are perfect but as you know, your angriness stems from the fact that an independent company that was appointed to carry out the checkout of your property, couldn’t attend at the time you wanted. You state that they don’t work weekends, when they in fact do. You have omitted to tell readers of this review that they did in fact offer to work at the weekend for you, but you didn’t want to get out of bed early in the morning to meet her. The lady from the inventory company involved, had existing appointments later that Saturday and simply wasn’t able to meet you when you wanted. She also offered the following Monday and Tuesday but again, this was not convenient for you. You also mention unfair clauses in your tenancy agreement. Your tenancy agreement is a standard assured shorthold tenancy with no restrictive requirements and is a similar tenancy agreement to that used by the majority of letting agents in the UK. The fact that you had to adhere to things that you did not wish to is the root of your problems with this. In particular, the fact that the chimney was swept at the start of your tenancy and having agreed at the outset to sweep it yourselves, you chose not to. You have also failed to mention to readers of this review that you left the property in a poor state. Infact, the cleaner YOU employed, stated to us after completing the job that, in their own words; ‘it was minging’. You also haven’t mentioned that several hundred pounds of your deposit was used to cover unpaid rent, cleaning and damage. Perhaps not all landlords would consider you to be model tenants? Ultimately, I am sorry that you weren’t happy with the process, but we act on behalf of the landlord and we had to ensure that the rent was repaid, that the check-in was booked promptly after your departure from the property, that the damage was accounted for and that the cleaning issues were attended to. I’m sorry that in attending to this, that we weren’t able to persuade the independent inventory company to fit in with your social arrangements and that you felt it necessary to vent your frustration at us in the destructive manner in which you did. David Griffiths

It’s really disappointing to receive this type of review, particularly when you have not been a client of ours I hope that you have posted this message to the wrong company by mistake as there are others with similar names, Perhaps you be kind enough to check this and with draw this review. it would be a shame to think that anybody would say this sort of thing maliciously, So if you do have a concern and it is genuine, please will you be kind enough to contact David on (01256) 892222 and we will be absolutely delighted to talk through any genuine concerns you may have.