I wouldn’t even give Northwood one star as the service here is absolutely awful, especially from the “Director” Katie Cameron. She’s aggressive and when you try and put your point across to her, she accuses you of being threatening so you’re basically dealing with a drama Queen who is so out of her depth it’s unreal. This company, and Katie in particular, lies through their teeth. Our situation was that we were offered the opportunity to buy the property we were renting, by the landlord who we’d gotten to know really well. We’d informed one of the members of staff at Northwood about this in our January inspection. She informed us that we would be contacted by a guy called Matt who would explain the process to both us and the owner of the property but, not to worry because “this kind of thing happens all the time”. It took two months of chasing before we managed to speak to the illusive Matt. When we spoke to him, he assured us as the tenants that we didn’t need to do anything and again, “this happens all the time” and once we’d complete on the property, we’d simply get our deposit back. Fast forward to nearing exchange and completion where Katie gets involved and tries to sabotage our completion by stating that no notice was given by the property owner and that they will be required to pay money to get out of their contract. After speaking with the owner, it turns out they hadn’t signed a renewal contract and once this was pointed out to Katie, she backtracked. We also found out that the property owner had no say as to whether we were able to move into the property - when we applied we were originally turned down because, in Northwood’s words, “the owner decided to go with another applicant”. We had also offered to pay a full 12 months rent up front which again, Northwood told us the owner didn’t want to do that - well that’s funny because we’ve since found out the owner didn’t even know we’d offered to do that. In fact, they didn’t know we’d moved in until someone on the estate had mentioned it to them. When I emailed Katie to complain about her holding up the process, she replied at 11pm accusing me of being threatening and that she has a client list of “700 people” and doesn’t deserve to be spoken to in the way I had. I have zero problem with sharing the email that I had sent to her to prove that I was anything but threatening. I was actually hoping for proactiveness from her and, seeing as she’s a director of the estate agency side of the company - Humphries, a little bit of sympathy to the fact that the house buying process is stressful enough without her causing more issues. Her response was patronising, aggressive and downright unprofessional which is basically her all round attitude. We also complained just in the last week about them letting a contractor into the house without our permission to carry out a gas safety check. They basically said to take it up with their contractor but still haven’t responded to my email asking for their contractors contact details. I’ve wanted to complain to the main Northwood group but, there’s no point in doing this because the branches are franchises, with no central customer service team. I was told that if I wanted to complain about Katie then I would have to send it to Helen Cameron - Katie’s Mum! So don’t ever expect an unbiased approach to your complaint because it’s family run. To summarise - avoid Northwood Chester, and Humphries, like the plague. If you want an honest and straightforward agency that has your best interests at heart, this is not the one as it’s run by a young girl who is out of her depth, overwhelmed and just wants to grab your money. There’s better agencies in the area who deal with clients in a much more professional manner.