I can't say that my overall experience with Martin&Co was bad, as a tenant I used to deal with multiple Martin&Co employees during 4 years of my tenancy and I didn't have any reasons to complain. Everything was fine until Kathryn from Colchester's branch became my point of contact. Since that moment it became a nightmare. I decided to move out and needed to get my deposit back. My contract says that Martin&Co "must tell the Tenant within 28 working days of the end of the tenancy if they propose to make any deductions from the Deposit". I was chasing her to get it resolved but haven't received responses, my messages were ignored and the whole thing has been delayed as much as possible. Finally after my multiple follow ups, visit and calls, I cornered her and we agreed to deduct part of my deposit. Then some time later ( long time after the 28 working days time frame ) she came back saying that landlord has changed his mind and wants to deduct more money. I did not agree with that and I have been advised that the matter will be submitted to TDS. It was on 14th of December and the TDS accepts request up to 3 months after the end of the contract (31st of January). Do you think that the dispute has been submitted on 14th of December? Of course not, she didn't do that. She just called me on 1st of Feb asking if I still want to dispute it. She has wasted another 6 weeks of my ( and landlord's time), missed the deadline and is going to submit it now and "hopefully they will accept it". I would not recommend any tenant or any landlord to use their services. I can only imagine all the lies she told my landlord and I am pretty sure that I'd need a quick, 10 min phone call with my landlord to get this resolved so both parties are satisfied. I don't even know exactly what the landlord wants to charge me for, I don't know the details as she didn't even bother to tell me so there was no attempt to resolve the matter. It was ultimatum - do you accept the charge or do we submit a dispute? It has been over 3 months since I moved out and I still haven't got all my deposit back.

I have been a tenant with M&co for 3 years. I have experienced something horrible with the managers. They are litterally Money suckers!!! Last bad thing they did to us is about the deposit. The claim they want to keep some money because they say they found dust over some windows blinds. I left the clat much cleaner then how it was delivered to me the first time!!! The blinds were covered in thick dust when I entered the property, now they want to keep some money from our deposit because they say there was light dust!!! I haven't been treated in this way evere from any one. Martin&co pprovides a very bad low, poor service to tentants and I can provide a long list of reasons for saying that. Managers are absolutely unprofessional! You should change job instead of sucking people money because of poor service and high fee cost!

I live next door to a property let by this Agency, they allow for overgrowth of foliage to grow over to other gardens, broken guttering unless ur on phone nagging them to get it fixed...I suggest if u want to let ur property and want to pay an Agency to maintain it for you, you might want to look elsewhere. I have pictures of you want to see.

this is the worst agency I know ..there absolutly don't care about u problem in flat.. showers leaking don't care.. gas pipe was cut two days without grass in a water.. u problem.. the only thing that it's amoney for rent on time.. so I avoid if you can. ... There will make 100% excuse why they would not help you.. and for you to recognise me I'm Anna Gicko and it's not fake 100% you are the worst agency in a whole business....

this is the worst agency I know ..there absolutly don't care about u problem in flat.. showers leaking don't care.. gas pipe was cut two days without grass in a water.. u problem.. the only thing that it's amoney for rent on time.. so I avoid if you can. ... There will make 100% excuse why they would not help you.. and for you to recognise me I'm Anna Gicko and it's not fake 100% you are the worst agency in a whole business....

Update: we notice that Martin & Co have responded by claiming our review is fake. I can assure readers it isn't. It is also worth noting that nearly all of their positive reviews appear to be from landlords, not tenants. Original review continues below... We had a terrible experience with Martin and Co. You can expect the usual dubious practices, such as exorbitant up-front fees for ‘referencing’. They also sent us an invoice for £125 to renew the lease (i.e. for them to print, sign and send a new contract), and immediately threatened to evict us if we didn’t pay. When we pointed out that a new fixed-term contract was unnecessary because the tenancy would automatically become ‘rolling’ they backed down, which just goes to show they were trying it on. A more unusual practice, however, was that they required us to take out an insurance policy that covers the landlord’s fixtures and fittings. We found no conventional insurance company that offers a policy like this to tenants, and Martin and Co admitted that effectively the only option was to take out the policy with their commercial partner, Homelet. The policy is completely pointless because the landlord is required to have buildings insurance themselves anyway, which should cover fixtures and fittings. We discovered that this part of the contract is likely to be unenforceable under the guidance of the Office of Fair Trading. The house had clearly been decorated nicely at some point, but was lacking essential maintenance over what must have been a long period. The radiators barely got hot, meaning that it was impossible to get the house warm on cold days. They made an attempt to fix this, but it didn’t work. One snowy day we had a water pipe leak in the roof space, which the plumber confirmed was due to poor maintenance. We had water leaking through the ceiling over shelves containing, amongst other things, computer equipment. Martin and Co offered no apology or compensation. Also the cooker kept failing, and was discovered by the repair man to be a dangerous fire hazard. It could not be repaired so as to work reliably, and it took them over a year to eventually provide a new one. The final insult came when we moved out. The check-out inspector made us sign a piece of paper confirming meter readings, and then later attached it to the end of her report so it looked like we’d agreed to everything she wrote. They were trying to charge us the most ridiculous cleaning fees, even though we left the house in better condition than we took it. E.g. one of the complaints was a single crumb supposedly found on a shelf. Thankfully, we were able to use some photos to get partial relief from the fees after taking it to the dispute resolution service. Martin and Co were thoroughly petty and unpleasant to deal with throughout the process, and ignored the statutory timeframe to respond to our claim.

This is the worst state agent I have never seen. They dont help to the tenants at all. If you have any problem the just wash their hands. I rented a house couple years ago and I lost in my deposit 900 pound I couldnt almost defend me. I advice everybody dont rent any house with them.

Never again. Not even if they were the only letting agent in the world. I would rather let me property go derelict than use this company again. I can not stress enough, no, no, no, no, NO