Dear Paul & Joaquim, Firstly, it is disappointing to receive such a review. As you have stated your Tenancy ended on 31st May, with the independent 3rd party check out taking place on this day. As soon as the report was received from the inventory clerk a couple of days later, this was shared with both yourselves and your Landlord. Unfortunately, as you are fully aware there were a number issue recorded on the report by the inventory clerk including cleaning, holes in wallpapered walls and a light fitting pulled from the ceiling. As explained to you at that time, costings to remediate these issue would need to be obtained and confirmation received from your former Landlord on what deduction they wished to make from the deposit. When there are such issues the process is not instant, however costings and your Landlord’s instructions have now been received and a proposal for the release of the deposit has been submitted to yourselves. Your comments regarding a contractor attending the property prior to your check out are disingenuous, as pressing repairs need to be carried out and this was arranged with your full agreement for 30th May. For the avoidance of any doubt, none of the deposit deductions proposed relate to any aspect of the work carried out by the contractor or any areas in which they were working. You also mention that we did not respond to your calls and emails, however you left this review less than 24 hours after sending an email to my colleague who was then out on appointments for the rest of the day and when you had already spoken with my other colleague a few hours before, who provided you with an update. I am sorry you feel that the process relating to the release of the deposit has not gone smoothly, however given the issues recorded by the inventory clerk and the need to remediate these, the matter has been handled in an appropriate and timely manner. Regards Matthew White – Director.

Dear J**** & C****** It is disappointing that you have left such a review and is not at all an accurate representation of your interactions with ourselves. You enquired about a property we were listing and we responded to you by email within 13 minutes of our office opening. Our initial communication attempted to ascertain your position in terms of the property you had expressed an interest in, this included basic information regarding your financial position. This is a standard question which is asked of every person looking to rent a property and is intended to make sure that anyone viewing the property can pass through the reference and affordability checks which are undertaken, should you submit a formal application to rent the property. By doing so it ensures neither party is wasting their time by undertaking a viewing. Based on the initial information provided by yourselves, we would be unable to successfully pass you through the referencing stage and we politely advised you of this. You subsequently had a telephone conversation with one of my colleagues a few hours later, where again you were informed of the reasons we would not be able to offer you a viewing. At this point you advised that you had further income that you hadn’t previously disclosed and advised you would email us with details of this to see if this could change the position on being able to pass referencing. As we had not received any such email from you, my colleague who you had spoken to the previous day, emailed you again to remind you that you would provide this information so we can see if you would pass through referencing. To this date, no response has been received by ourselves. Instead of communicating with ourselves, you have decided to leave a fictious and defamatory Google review. Whilst you have tried to sully our name with your review you will note we have redacted your names from this response. Matthew White - Director

Marcus Halberstram is a fictitious character in the movie; American Psycho. The claims being made here are equally fictitious and are entirely without merit. A cursory glance of public records clearly show the actual ownership structure of Martin & Co Norwich.

Mr Ellis, This review is not only malicious but disingenuous given it is factually incorrect. You had been made aware of issues regarding the condition of the property at the end of your Tenancy (which is not the month ago as you stated) and you had been notified we were awaiting costings for tenant incurred remedial works to enable a deposit proposal to be submitted. We never wish to unnecessarily delay the release of any deposit but you must surely appreciate during the current global situation, many things are taking longer than they would have previously. Contractor’s are extremely busy currently and are prioritising urgent matters over general remedial works as was the case here. Also factoring in the Easter Bank holidays, in reality only several working days had elapsed since the independent check was undertaken. With respect to your telephone call, it is not acceptable that a member of our team be faced with a grown man shouting down the phone at them. I fully support how the call was handled and terminated by my colleague politely and calmly advising you they were not prepared to continue a conversation when faced with your aggression. In any event, all of the remedial requirements were entirely within your own control and had the property been returned with only fair wear and tear, then no issues would have arisen. Matthew White - Director, Martin & Co Norwich

Simon – Irrespective of your ‘Fact’ being, in fact, not true, your defamatory comment about Martin & Co’s mission is inane. At Martin & Co Norwich, we make it our mission to provide ethical and professional letting and management services to landlords and tenants alike. The many positive reviews from both landlords and tenants encourage us to continue to do so. Rightly, it does concern us when we receive negative reviews and I did try to contact you before posting this response to discuss the motivation behind yours. However, as you did not respond, I can only assume you prefer for this interaction to be played out publicly. Mike White - Director Martin & Co Norwich

Dear Mr Moreno, I appreciate you felt sufficiently aggrieved to post a negative review and that this response thereto has been delayed. However, I have struggled to fully understand the basis of your complaint(s) although from how I’ve interpreted what you’ve said, the complaints do seem more than a little spurious. For example, you say ‘Before our tenancy we were asked to pay for a professional cleaning (optional) where we were said if we paid for that at the beginning we didn't need to do it at the end'. This is just not true; how could we know in advance of your tenancy, your standards of personal hygiene/cleanliness and therefore the condition of how you would leave the property? Our process to judge whether or not a deduction from a security deposit is required is entirely objective and fair to all. Firstly, the security deposit is physically held by a Government backed independent agency; the money cannot be distributed to either party without the explicit agreement of both. Secondly, as you know, a fully Independent Inventory Clerk meets the incoming tenant on the day of move-in and ‘walks through’ the property with them to physically check the written inventory is entirely accurate; the tenant then signs the inventory to confirm such. At the end of the tenancy, the same Inventory Clerk – as I say, fully independent of Martin & Co – meets the tenant on the day of vacation and again, ‘walks through’ with them to physically check the condition of the property against the ingoing inventory. All differences are detailed in writing and the tenant is asked to sign the check out report – if they disagree with any of the findings, they have the opportunity to note their objections. Upon receipt of the check out report, Martin & Co assess any differences between moving in and out, using independent guidelines pertaining to wear and tear allowances. Any differences beyond fair wear and tear are then costed with 3rd party contractors and required deductions are proposed. Should a tenant then disagree with either the scale of the works required or the proposed costs thereof, they have the opportunity to have an independent Adjudicator appointed (free of charge) to adjudicate the dispute. You chose not to dispute the proposed deductions and accepted them. For the avoidance of any doubt, lack of cleaning to an acceptable standard is not fair wear and tear. In summary, I am sorry that you feel otherwise but I believe you were dealt with politely, fairly and objectively before, during and after your tenancy, despite my colleagues having to accept vitriolic phone calls and written communications from you. Mike White - Director, Martin & Co Norwich *** Update: Since posting our response Mr Moreno has edited his original post to the point where the independent reader is unlikely to make much sense of what is being argued which is probably just as well as much of his diatribe is now libellous****

As a local independent family run agency, we work incredibly hard for our landlord clients to provide a high quality, value for money service. Without being complacent about our service levels, the Google Reviews from our landlords all endorse this. Looking more closely at this particular reviewer – at the time of writing this response – they have within a very short space of time (less than 4 weeks) reviewed 16 business entities in Norwich on a random basis; all with meaningless, unverifiable comments. It appears this person for whatever reasons of self-aggrandisement, is simply seeking to raise their own Google profile. We can only conclude therefore, given there is no other evidence of an online footprint for the reviewer and having no idea who they are, this review is wholly fake. Mike White – director, Martin & Co Norwich

Simon – Irrespective of your ‘Fact’ being, in fact, not true, your defamatory comment about Martin & Co’s mission is inane. At Martin & Co Norwich, we make it our mission to provide ethical and professional letting and management services to landlords and tenants alike. The many positive reviews from both landlords and tenants encourage us to continue to do so. Rightly, it does concern us when we receive negative reviews and I did try to contact you before posting this response to discuss the motivation behind yours. However, as you did not respond, I can only assume you prefer for this interaction to be played out publicly. Mike White - Director Martin & Co Norwich

Dear Miss McCorgray, Unfortunately, GDPR regulations do not allow for us to pass comment and respond to this (in our view) disingenuous rating in detail. This is disappointing given the circumstances.

Dear Mrs H I am sorry to have to publicly doubt what you are saying but good communication is a key factor for us and I can genuinely say, we have not received an email from you addressed to Martin & Co in Norwich. Also, your comments about a ‘friends daughter’ are slightly dubious to say the least. Unfortunately, in the absence of knowing who you are and with none of my staff being aware of the need to have a 'firm but polite' conversation with a potential tenant in recent weeks, your review in my honest opinion has all the hallmarks of being posted by a competitor seeking to deliberately do us down. However, if this is genuine, then I apologise and I would gladly be prepared to discuss your concerns and by all means please contact me in person on 01603 766860, I would be more than happy to discuss the matter with you. Mike White – Director. ***UPDATE*** 5 weeks on from my initial response and 'Mrs H' has not been in contact and because of the anonymity of the post, I have no means of contacting them. MW