Worst agency ever .

This is probably the worst letting agency in the city. The staff is extremely unhelpful, arrogant and ridiculously rude. I let an apartment in Jewellery Quarter with them and I have ended up with the worst possible experience in my 5 years in the U.K. I would not recommend that you use these guys to deal with anything from sales to lettings to maintenance. Abhorrent service.

My experience during my tenancy was fairly standard for a letting agent, unresponsive and generally unhelpful. To be expected. However my experience trying to get the deposit back has been far from normal. John Shepherd are happy to send unsubstantiated claims for large sums of money but when pressed on why these deductions are being made are unable to provide a breakdown for the costs. This is of course in breach of the The Property Ombudsman (TPO) Code of Practice and ARLA Propertymark membership both of which they are bound by. This has halted deposit deduction negotiations and thus the proper return of my money in a timely fashion. I have raised these breaches of the Code with both Tina Margetts and Chris Blick but as of yet neither have even acknowledged receipt of the advice or complaint respectively. While they may have the logos of both ARLA and TPO to assure customers of their professionalism this could not be further from my experience when dealing with this organisation. I would urge others to read the TPO Code of Practice for Residential Letting Agents so you know exactly what service you should be receiving and ensure you are not being inadvertently mistreated by this organisation. Consumers have far more rights than letting agents would have you believe.

Called to ask about a house on Bull Street which had advertised three bedrooms of which one was a double. I said we were interested on behalf of another party mainly because of its location. I asked for the size of the other two rooms in order to see if a double bed could be fitted in it, but was immediately told that there were interested parties and a viewing could be offered as room measuring was not one of the things they did! I find that entirely unhelpful. There is no plan of the house either. Why would I want to waste my time and theirs to view a property - simply to see if a room was big enough?

The worst rental experience we have ever had! The way we were treated is an absolute disgrace. We rented through Acres/John Shepherd from Feb 21 to April 22. In Jan 22 we received a call from the estate agents at Acres asking to come round to get the house ready for sale. This came as a complete shock to us as we hadn’t even been told by John Shepherd that the landlord was planning on selling the house. A complete lack of communication from John Shepherd, and clearly incompetent staff who couldn’t even be bothered to give us the heads up that the house was being sold. During our time in the house, we had the displeasure of dealing with Julie Sargeant who is possibly the rudest, most condescending person I have ever dealt with. Emails were constantly ignored, she only replied to emails if she needed something from us. We also had many contractors visiting the house during our time there who made comments about Julie, so it was interesting to note that it is not just us who she was unpleasant to. We requested to be present during the inventory check out (as is our right), however we were denied this due to “Covid restrictions”. We found this very odd as this was in April 22 after all Covid restrictions had been lifted. It was also odd that this didn’t seem to be a problem when we lived in the house and the agents needed to come over, this was while restrictions were very much in place. John Shepherd have also not given us any of our post since we moved out. Julie said we had some post quite soon after we moved out so I gave her our forwarding address. We never received this post which Julie claimed she sent - which incidentally coincided with us disagreeing to the deposit deductions! I have since contacted multiple times asking to collect our post but have been told there is none. Having been in contact with the senders, I am aware of multiple pieces of post so I know that this is untrue. Absolutely appalling experience, do not deal with John Shepherd!

This is the worst letting business for any landlords as they do not respect the landlords enquiries. Stolen items, and yet nothing is done about it. Tenants take deposit with half the furniture without even letting us know and yet proceeds to give the deposit back. Disgraceful!

Rude Customer service

The worst office, their scam starts at one riyal without exaggeration and they exploit you in a horrible way, it's unimaginable. They extort money from you for the most trivial things, they don't respond to emails to the point where you have to call their office, they make you pay for the landlord's invoices not yours but yours, so stay away from them as far as possible. But in general, if you have to, you must take pictures of the apartment you are renting from the first day from every angle and note if it is dirty or if there is rust or mold and send it to them by email to prove the date. Because one day they will try to take your insurance, this will be your proof. Also, make sure that the insurance is with the (TDS) tenancy deposit scheme. They are a third party who hold the money, but this office takes advantage of the scholarship recipient's lack of knowledge. The useful information from this is that if they say they will take from your insurance for trivial things, you can go to TDS and file a complaint against them and they will return your money or at least 75% of it. Good luck.

They have let me son and daughter in law down big time rented them a bad property whilst pregnant with twins and the arrival of twins. now refusing to refund deposit