Kaan, thank you for your feedback although I am disappointed by your comments. My team member fully explained to you that for Health & Safety reasons, we wait for 72 hours after a tenant has moved out before entering a property to completely eliminate the risk of COVID-19. This is based on guidance from the government and supported by our Group's policy. The fact that you had viewings lined up for the day after the check-out is your choice - you manage the property and not ourselves. I feel that in this environment that was not appropriate but I accept that it is your choice. This was explained to you and yet you still choose to highlight your dissatisfaction about us without giving a full explanation. I accept that there can be a difference of opinion on government guidelines for dealing with COVID but I have a duty of care to my employees and I would be rightly criticised and potentially prosecuted by the H&SE if I went against government guidance in my H&S Risk Assessment and operating practice resulting in harm to one of my employees or customers. This is the same with your throw away comment about other properties - you have frequently asked us to do things that are not fully complicit with legal requirements and then been unhappy and criticised us for not carrying out your wishes. I think it is for the best that we no longer work with you and we would not want to work with other landlords who wish us to act in ways we do not consider to be appropriate and requiring us to not fully comply with all obligations upon us. As is evidenced by many other reviews, the vast majority of landlords we support are very happy with our approach but I am sorry that you have not had what you feel you want from us. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

Emily, I was sorry to read your comments and we always aim to provide the best possible service and are disappointed if we fall short. However, there are a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies that need to be addressed with your comments as well as explanation needed which we have previously tried to clarify with you. Firstly, you are not aware of the reasons for the landlord change of agent but it is not connected with you or your claims so I would have preferred you did not comment on something that you do not have any knowledge regarding. You moved in many months ago now so it is difficult to comment on your issues getting in contact with us - this is not feedback we normally receive, in fact we are usually complimented on our responsiveness as you can see in other reviews here so I can only apologise if that was not your experience. We do not have an apprentice so I do not understand your comment on this. Regarding your check-in, the landlord is very hands on and insists on doing all check-ins. Again it was so long ago that you moved in and we are not involved that I cannot comment on your experience. Also, the landlord insists on providing his own check-in pack so you would need to pick up with him regarding spelling mistakes and lack of information. We provide the legally required documentation (AST, Deposit Prescribed Information) much of which is in a prescribed form and certainly does not have spelling mistakes. Regarding your complaints about fellow tenants, it is not fair to say nothing was done, not least as you were copied in to the communications we sent to all tenants reminding of them courteous behaviour etc. in seeking to resolve the issues you raised with us. And we spoke to you about the issues to understand them fully so I would dispute your claim of no contact from us. I understand your frustration with their behaviour but the only way to completely eradicate it lies in a legal process that takes time to achieve an end result of the tenant being forced to leave the property. So you know it is untrue to say there was no contact from us and nothing was done about it given that we had contact with you and you saw the communications we sent out. Of course I am sorry that you remain frustrated that the issues continued despite our efforts and actions but we did everything within legal means to try to resolve the matters you raised with us and more time was needed to seek a forced resolution. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

Danny, your rating indicates you are not happy with the service you have received from us but you have left no comments. We cannot find your name as a current or past or prospective customer so we are keen to learn who you are and 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, Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

Sean, thank you for your comments although I am disappointed that you are not happy with the check-out experience. I will respond to the points you have made as not all are consistent with the facts. I also feel very strongly about your comments that we were looking to steal money from you, not least because the process is covered by an independent checking process but also we act for the landlord so any monies deducted from a tenant's deposit belong to the landlord and not to us. We were certainly not looking to steal money and I resent this claim by you. Firstly, I would like to point out that you did leave the property in a poor condition and it was just that the independent adjudicator disagreed with how much was being proposed for deduction based on quotes because of acclaimed fair wear and tear. To your allegation that we we "had used older photos", we actually had never managed this property before your tenancy so we did not have any older photos, all of the photos we used were ones taken from just before you moved in. You say you cleaned and cleared the house throughout but the adjudicator commented "The photographs from the start and end of the tenancy show a visible deterioration to the cleanliness of the oven" so it was clear that the oven was not clean at the end of the tenancy despite your claims of cleaning and a professional oven cleaning kit. We were awarded deposit monies to get the oven cleaned after the way you had left it. There were also empty beverage cans in a bathroom cupboard and many items left in the kitchen cupboards which we were awarded deposit to clear. And yet you claimed you cleaned and cleared the house. I would not say you were a model tenant as we have many tenants who leave the property completely clean and clear at the end of their tenancy with no damage and no requirement to claim to use monies from their deposit to rectify issues - the vast majority of our tenants get 100% of their deposit back. Also, you should have got permission to keep a cat and you did not (which a model tenant would do) - there is then a pet addendum you would have signed committing to certain actions at the end of the tenancy. Your cat scratched 3 walls with anaglypta wallpaper which is not easy to repair just with paint. This was the biggest disagreement with the adjudicator as they also argued the walls could just be painted. However you had also caused 36 holes in the back bedroom wall due to fittings you affixed and we got a quote from a company to make repairs to the decor given the type of wall covering. We were obviously sorry about your illness. However, we have to act impartially but on behalf of the landlord to assess how you leave the property at the end of the tenancy compared to the start. We were awarded relatively significant monies because of the poor condition you left the property in despite your review implying that you had left it in very good condition. We used contractor quotes to put a value to the poor condition you left the property in but the adjudicator chose to apply different values in some cases. As a final point, you signed all of the photos at the start of the tenancy and you have the opportunity to check them at check-in before you sign them. If you had requested it, we would have sent you a copy of the photos report, it is not a problem. We take fresh photos each time a new tenant moves in and, as I mentioned earlier, we had not managed the property previously so it would not have been possible for us to use "older photos" as we did not have any prior photos. I obviously hope you have settled well into your new home and that you are well. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited

Leo, I can only apologise of there has been any misunderstanding. I can assure you there would have been no racism because your wife/partner has a European accent (as implied). Whilst you do not mention who she spoke to and when, I cannot investigate to clarify. I can tell you that my wife is Spanish and is loved by all of the team. And also a large proportion of our tenants are non-British of many mixed origins. I cannot explain why it could have been she could not get an appointment but you did - I do know we had an application that was progressing but was rejected so maybe your partner called just before we made that decision and you called just after ... but I am guessing to be honest. What I do know is that we would not have rejected a viewing with her based on her accent / being European (non-British). So I can only apologise for any misunderstanding. Best regards, Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

We are sorry that you had that experience and cannot be sure what happened given we do not have your name and you do not indicate if you did anything else to enable us to contact you. If you are interested in a property then we would very much encourage you to get in touch again. Technical issues do sometimes happen unfortunately which maybe why we did not get your enquiry but I would encourage you to give us another opportunity to speak with you. Our telephone number is 01942 321305 and e-mail address is wigan@northwooduk.com. Thanks, Steve Adams, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

I am sorry to hear that you are not happy with how this matter has been dealt with. I have checked the 4 maintenance jobs you reported in the last 18 months and 2 jobs were completed within 5 days and another job in 4 weeks and this latest one in 5 weeks. Some of the delay in getting jobs completed is down to contractor availability in getting quotes back and then instruction from the landlords and then contractor availability to go to do the work as well as your availability to allow work to be completed which is sometimes a challenge. I am satisfied that the actions we take are not causing unnecessary delays and therefore I feel your feedback about us is unfair albeit I have to accept that sometimes non-urgent jobs are taking a number of weeks to resolve given the logistics of getting quotes, instruction and then completion of the work by contractors. In terms of the gate, the contractor has sent us photos of when he had completed the repair before the weekend and, compared with the photos that you sent us earlier today, it is clear that further damage occurred which we assume was during the bad weather at the weekend. It appears that the gates may have blown open and blown freely in the wind causing the latest issue that they will not now close again. The contractor has confirmed to us that he will re-attend as soon as possible which should be before the end of the week (if not today). So it is not fair to say you called us yesterday and that we did nothing about it - after your call we contacted the contractor straight away and we had to leave you a message when we went back to you. I agree that the contractor has not been able to stop all of their other work to come and attend to this straight away to get it fixed yesterday but this was not possible for the contractor to do and we felt it inappropriate to call out another separate contractor. So your feedback is correct that you told us yesterday there was a further issue with the gate and as of 10am today it is still not fully resolved but, again, I feel that feedback is unfair in it being critical of our actions. I am more than happy for you to call to discuss the matter with me and especially if you have more detail / evidence of where our actions have caused unnecessary delay in getting maintenance issues resolved as I would take this feedback very seriously and want to resolve it. Thanks, Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited.

Jonathan, I am sorry to hear that you were not happy with our decision to not accept your application. I am disappointed that you did not give us a chance to talk to you about your dissatisfaction and especially when you were very pleasant to my staff on the telephone and did not raise the issues with them at any time that you have described above (and we were even speaking to you in the hour before the notification we received letting us know that you had left this review). I personally think that landlords will actually appreciate that we scrutinise very carefully all applications and use all our observations to decide if tenants may or may not be suitable. We will not take a gamble on tenant quality in terms of ability to pay their rent or to look after the property. In your case, and I of course cannot give out personal information in this public forum, we were made very nervous about your hiding information that you subsequently provided and you and your partner right in front of us were talking about what you should or should not tell us. Where we grant a tenancy, we are giving tenant(s) access to a high value asset (the landlord's property) and what is a high value financial transaction which could be worth £6,000 per annum or more which, if not paid, puts a landlord at financial risk. We take our responsibility very seriously before we are happy to recommend or accept a tenancy on behalf of a landlord and if we have reasons to not be happy then we will reject an application. I am sorry that this has happened in your case as your application has been rejected - and we will be refunding your application fee in full. We have acted in reasonable time - there were 2 working days from the point where you provided all information we needed to carry out our checks to the point where we called your partner to let her know that your application had not been successful. I do not consider this to be unreasonable and we do not call applicants every hour or two to let them know where we are up to, that is true. It is not at all as straightforward as you have made out - what about a situation where we have someone who earns, say, £50k per annum but has personal expenses of £55k per annum so we decide they cannot afford the rent ... I think most fair minded people would say that it is right we should be nervous about someone's ability to pay the rent. And yet that person could say "I earn £50k a year and Northwood would not accept me as a tenant". This is why landlords are prepared to pay for our service because they expect us to be thorough in our assessment of tenants in all aspects before offering a tenancy which is then a legally binding contract difficult to get out of if things go wrong. I am happy for you to pick up the telephone and call me to discuss further if there are issues left unanswered. Steve Adams, Director, Northwood (Wigan) Limited EDIT: Following your additional comment in response to my comments above, I do not wish to continue this conversation on an open public forum. You are choosing to give very personal details and that is your choice. I will purely add as a final comment that you gave us more than enough reasons to be nervous, not least blacking out a large number of transactions on your bank statements when you originally gave them to us in an attempt to hide an issue - it was very difficult for us to recover our confidence after that action by you regardless of all the other things you might be able to add that you believe supports why you think we should have accepted your application. I re-state my offer that if you call me I am happy to discuss with you. Thanks, Steve.