I have rented from Northwood Preston for just over two years. I have previously been an estate agent and have significant experience handling lettings so my assessment of Northwood is both personal and professional. They're horrible. They have been my letting agent and landlord, an arrangement that deceives property owners and screws tenants and should be illegal in this country. After more than a year living with a malfunctioning boiler, cold showers and faulty electrics, its clear Northwood is inept and I can confidently say the government should ban these guaranteed rent schemes where the letting agent, acting as the landlord, has no real interest in the property other than collecting rent. While they've sent vendors to make repairs, in some cases they made matters worse. Northwood has never followed up with me to find out if requested repairs were completed satisfactorily. They just don't care about their tenants. Northwood has also been attempting to sell this home for a year and a half and have failed miserably. They significantly overvalued the property and have had less than 10 viewings in a year and a half in a desirable area (the property also sat empty on the rental market for six months before I rented it). In my experience, the Wards, who own this franchise, are demonstrably incompetent, uncaring and unqualified and I have discontinued rent payments and viewings in protest. Response to Northwood's reply: I can pay the rent so your assumption is completely wrong. As you know, difficulties with a bank transfer were the cause of a prior delay in payment of rent and you were kept well-informed of those circumstances but have decided to be vindictive and cast my delayed payment and my more recent refusal to pay rent in protest in a more nefarious light. Shame on you. I don’t appreciate your slanderous insinuation that I’m a liar. Not surprising coming from you though as you attempted to evict me just prior to the government imposed lockdown in retaliation for negative reviews I posted about the poor quality of your services. You only rescinded the eviction notice when I contacted the owners directly and told them what you were doing. And you expect me to be grateful to you for the reprehensible manner in which you tried to silence criticism? I have been forced to remain in the home due to the pandemic and informed you that I would be leaving at my earliest opportunity making the repair of the boiler and other outstanding issues moot at that point. You've had well over a year to repair the boiler, the electrics, the falling flashing, etc. but have chosen instead to either ignore these issues or try to find the easy way out. As a result, I requested a reduction in my rent payments for the few months I expected to remain in the property as compensation and you not only tried to ignore that request as well but flatly refused to even take it up with the property owner. Communication with you has proven to be useless and a waste of my time so I've stopped. I'm the one who has had to chase you to complete repairs, not the other way round. I approved and cooperated with all viewing requests, sparse though they were, up until the time the pandemic hit. By the way, post-it notes don't cause holes in walls and mine certainly didn't. If you want to continue in this business then I suggest you either focus on doing a better job or get thicker skin. As we've all seen with recent events, if you're in a position of power in a relationship, as Northwood is in this one, and you do nothing, ignore the problems or you make matters worse, then you should expect the unheard to react negatively. I've certainly endured enough cold showers over the past year+ that it should be understandable that my blood is boiling. And, you know, Northwood has never once apologized and that alone should speak volumes about the kind of people they are. Btw, Didn't take the light bulbs love. Lights don't work because of your faulty electrics. Hope you've figured that out by now, but I'm not confident given my experience. Rent was current.NegativeQuality, Professionalism