May, your rating indicates you are not happy with the service you have received from us but you have left no comments. We are keen to learn what happened to result in your feeling dissatisfied so that we can at least learn from it or have an opportunity to resolve any issue that there might have been. Thanks, Michelle, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

Katie, I am sorry to read your comments and that you are not happy. I have read through the e-mails to which you refer and I feel that your feedback is grossly unfair. It is clear that you are not happy that the leak that has appeared in the property after you bought the property is not going to be rectified by the previous property owner - although it is not clear to me why they should be expected to resolve it. That said, you told us about the leak, and asked us to contact the seller, which we did on your behalf. None of the e-mails sent to you in responding to your request for us to contact them have been dismissed and I certainly cannot agree that my team member is disinterested, belittling and rude. They are all polite, and very responsive (replies within hours of your e-mail to us) and there is no evidence at all of being rude. I accept you do not like the seller's answer, which we have relayed on their behalf ... you confirmed that the leak seems to be coming from the neighbour's roof and the seller has confirmed that they would not be prepared to deal with that. You do not like that answer. That is nothing to do with us being uninterested, belittling, dismissive and rude. Ultimately we are acting as a go-between between you and the seller since you finalised the purchase. The seller is on holiday and we have been trying to reach them on your behalf by phone and email. It is clear that you and the seller had agreed certain things would be done that we were not aware of (you had separate communication with the seller before the sale completed during viewings). As soon as you came to us and asked for updates on those matters, even though we were not aware of them, we have contacted the seller on your behalf to try to get you updates. It is interesting that you have not quoted any of these dismissive, belittling, rude emails but that will be because the emails do not demonstrate any of that behaviour. Your comments are purely borne out of frustration that the seller promised to do things for you but has gone on holiday and a leak has appeared which was not present before. I would ask that you give serious consideration to removing / adjusting this review as it is completely unfair and does not reflect the interaction we have had with you in trying to assist you. The fact that you do not like what the seller is feeding back to you via ourselves is not our problem and we should not be blamed for it - which is what you are doing. It is a real shame that it is not possible to confirm the content of the emails publicly but I feel that if you look back at the email trail between Michelle Jantzen (Davies) and yourself you will not see any evidence of the issues you have raised. You do not like the message you have received from the seller via ourselves and you are shooting the messenger as a result. I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you to clear up the evident misunderstanding relating to ourselves. Given the unfair nature of your review and feedback, there is no apology to make and I will most certainly not be apologising to you as none of your claims are even close to being justified. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

I am now editing my response as I have been able to fully investigate. We only have 1 property we are currently selling with confirmed Japanese knotweed - it has been confirmed by a specialist and there is a treatment plan in place. There is a sale progressing and the buyer is aware of the treatment plan and diagnosis and they were made aware by us from the outset as it had been confirmed by the time that they first viewed it. We will only advise of a Japanese knotweed issue where it has been confirmed by a specialist as there are too many different types of knotweeds to speculate about a specific one. We would be rightly criticised if we expressed our opinion about whether a particular weed growth is or might be Japanese knotweed as we cannot be expected to be experts and should not speculate on such matters, just as we would not speculate if a roof needs replacing or the property to be re-wired if it is just our opinion for some observation. You have to pay a fair amount of money for a specialist report for knotweed because it needs specialist investigation to confirm whether or not it is Japanese knotweed. I am dismissing your feedback as either fabricated or misplaced for some other reason. Unless you are prepared to give more detail either publicly here, including the address of the property you viewed with us, or by email for my attention to wigan@northwooduk.com then I would appreciate it if you withdrew your review as it is not a fair review. You can also raise a formal complaint which would ultimately be investigated by The Property Ombudsman if you are saying you have material evidence that we knowingly sought to mislead you. The complaint procedure can be found at www.northwooduk.com. Even though it causes us work, I would welcome a formal complaint as I am convinced it will clear our actions (if your claims are true in any event). In addition we have sought to investigate your name on social media etc. because we have never viewed a property with someone called Faye nor with a surname Graham (or at least not in the past 12 months or so). I will request Google to remove your review given that it is not a fair review but I do not believe there are the serious grounds proven to achieve a removal. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited Faye, we do not have you listed as a party who has had any prior contact with us which makes it practically impossible to investigate your unsubstantiated claim. All I can comment at the moment until we have further information is that we would never seek to hide material information and there are many examples I could provide where we have done so. I will see what I can do to investigate your claims given I would agree that it is unacceptable to withhold material information. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

Keith, My apologies for this. Unfortunately our software is not set up to give that level of granularity. If you are registered as looking for a property (regardless of type) then any new property we market will be alerted to you. Software that Rightmove use, for example, is more sophisticated as it is a dedicated search engine. It costs a lot of money to replicate what Rightmove have and our IT strategy has decided to not expend so much investment dedicated to our own website when people looking for properties usually use a search engine like Rightmove etc. as this finds properties with all agents. Our own website would only give properties that we are marketing. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

22/07/21 - we have now tracked down who this is from and it is a malicious review. We have submitted a request to Google to remove it. These comments are not from the named individual and are false as the individual has never used us to sell a property. On that basis we have asked Google to remove it. 20/07/21 Dwayne, we think you have posted this in error and we are keen to resolve the matter as we cannot find your name as a current or past customer. We certainly never take any property on without signing a sales agreement so it seems to us you are mistaken as to which agent has been / was assisting you. Please feel free to add to your review giving the property address if you can (or at least just the street) so that we can verify. We have so few properties taking 6 months to sell and we know the owners' names for those properties and none match or are a close match to your name. Therefore we are concerned that this is a false review or a misplaced review. I would encourage you to get in touch. Our telephone number is 01942 321305 and e-mail address is wigan@northwooduk.com.

Susan, I want to start by sincerely apologising for any inconvenience caused after your experience with my team. As business owner, I expect my team to deliver the best possible service and will always investigate where that is not achieved. I would also like to point out however, that we are a franchise and I have no relationship with Eastbourne except that that we share the same company name, as with any other franchise. Therefore, I would have preferred that you left your feedback for the Eastbourne office against their Google entry and not mine (and I would be grateful if you would edit and remove it from mine). For the most part, the reviews left for my business, the Wigan Office, are excellent because that is the general experience. However, we are human and I accept that not everything goes the way we want them to and some people are left feeling dissatisfied, as in your situation. In terms of the issue of the bedrooms, we take instruction from the vendor who clearly (as you would if it was your house) wanted it to be described as 2 bedrooms plus a loft room as opposed to 1 bedroom plus a loft room. I am sure you understand why. And it is perfectly legal to do so. You noted that the floor plan did not show the stairs to the loft room which was an omission that I apologise for and we will resolve. The detailed description clearly stated in that bedroom that stairs led from it to the loft room. And, the photographs included clearly show the stairs in that bedroom. I accept you missed those aspects and focussed on the headline description and floor plan. But I refuse to accept that we set out to mislead when despite the omission on the floor plan, all other material clearly represented the situation. I am also sorry for your experience with the telephone call - I have listened to the recording and agree it could have been briefer and managed differently than it was to achieve the outcome you were seeking. I hope that we can have an additional opportunity for you to enjoy the general experience the vast majority of our clients experience. Stephen Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

Daryll, thank you for your feedback and we will act where we need to but I do feel that not all of your comments are justified. I accept that much of this is long after the fact and it is your recollection and we would have appreciated the chance to discuss with you at the time to clear up any misunderstanding. To address what you have raised: Asking price - we did not know about Purple Bricks or what they had suggested. As you are fully aware, the price we suggested got an agreed sale at the full price but disappointingly the sale fell through last September time and then the market went quiet following further COVID restrictions locally and then nationally which was when the price was reduced as agreed with you. Photos - we do not understand this feedback at all as we produced a brochure with the photos and you signed off on all of them. When we suggested to update some of the photos there was no delay we can see for any of the days earlier than we came to take some new photos. But this is also going back over 6 months ago so I am not sure where the misunderstanding has arisen. Buyers - both buyers had their position fully qualified and the one that completed had no issues with completion in terms of anything to do with monies so we do not understand your comment. Solicitor engagement - it absolutely is our job to ensure that solicitors are progressing the sale process. The buyer's solicitor contacted us as they had not received a response during 4 weeks to enquiries and despite their contacting your solicitor directly and chasing they had heard nothing back. We have a duty to ensure progression and therefore it was right and proper that we informed you and contacted your solicitor to request an update on where the responses to the enquiries were up to, how long they would take and if there were any issues so that we could then inform the buyer's solicitor given that your solicitor was saying nothing. Both you and your solicitor took offence to our seeking to resolve this matter and I do not agree that the tone was inappropriate - because we were asking questions that your solicitor did not want us to ask (because it was not clear what they had been doing for 4 weeks) the questions were taken as demanding / overbearing. Being frank, the questions need to be asked about where things were up to and what was causing the delay otherwise the buyer's solicitor could have lost confidence and could have resulted in this loss of confidence being communicated to the buyer and putting the sale at risk. Completion day - you rang for advice as you knew you were late in leaving the property, the property had formally completed and you no longer owned the property but you were still moving out and the person you spoke to had a duty of care to explain the legal ramifications of your not having left the property when you should have done. If the situation had not been explained and subsequent action had been taken against you or an issue affecting the new owner's insurance etc. then you would have had a justified complaint against us. So I recognise that what we told you did not make for pleasant listening but we had to tell you the truth. However, we spoke to the buyer to explain the situation and got their permission for you to contact them so we gave you their details and you were able to reach an agreement with them - we would not legally be able to act for you for this specific issue but we facilitated your being able to achieve resolution. I accept you did not like at all what my staff member had to say because they were telling you things that you did not really want to hear but they had to give you clear information on the potential ramifications. We recognise that the house selling/buying experience is very stressful and I can only apologise if it came across that we were not sensitive to this - other people's feedback is very positive about us but I accept you were left dissatisfied. Steve Adams, Director