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An estate agent.

They come strongly DISrecommended by Rachael and AlexChurchill. A list of the ways in which they've been rubbish follows. Note that any one, or even two, of these issues could be excused as the kind of thing that "just happens". But all these, within two or three months? They're rubbish.

(Or, at the very least, their Cambridge office is immensely rubbish.)

1) We asked Jason, the agent we were dealing with, how we should contact him. He originally said the office phone number would get straight to him and office email would be read by everyone. There were many times when we left messages for him on the office phone and waited over 24 hours for reply (which could be very important when trying to make an offer on a house) and have sent emails and got no reply at all for days and have had to chase by phone. Not just once, but many times.

2) They said their mortgage adviser and solicitor would contact us, and it was ages before either of them did (I think we chased them up).

3) They said that as we were selling our house with them, we'd get preferential treatment for vendors in getting to view new houses etc. There was one house which Jason mentioned several times as something we might be interested in, but didn't give any details; Rachael asked multiple times and the details kept not being ready; eventually it was sold to someone else before we ever got to see it. There were multiple other properties we expressed an interest in, which they said they'd email through straight away but didn't and we had to chase.

4) They kept phoning Alex to arrange viewings, despite the fact that both of us had told them on multiple occasions to phone Rachael.

5) A few times they phoned to change the time of a viewing without making it obvious that was what they were doing. E.g. "I've got a lady who wants to view the property at 6," as though it's a new lady and not the lady we're currently expecting at 5. Then I'd still be expecting the lady at 5 and ring them when she didn't turn up.

6) One time they arranged a viewing for half an hour before Rachael told them she had to go out. 15 mins after the viewing time, she rang Haart to say no one had turned up, and they said their agent was on her way; another 15 mins later there was still no sign and she rang again and said she was going out anyway. They never phoned to rearrange the viewing or to explain what had happened, even though we chased them.

7) They almost never phone with feedback; you have to chase, and even then they often don't know and say they'll get back to you and then don't.

8) When we gave them the keys (and got a receipt), at the next viewing, they expressed concern about how they'll do the two viewings that afternoon if they don't have the keys. Just more demonstrations of the complete lack of communication within their office.

9) By this point, we were wanting to get another agency selling our property. The terms we'd signed mentioned a few sketchy details about automatically converting into a multi-agency agreement if we got another agency in. We asked Haart really quite a lot of times, by email and phone, for multi-agent terms in writing, but never got them.

10) Phoning up to find out the multi-agent rates, Jason said on the phone that Haart's multi-agent fee is 1.5%, and seemed OK with our contract converting to multi-agent. But we later spoke to the branch manager, who said the fee was £3000 (rather higher than 1.5% of our flat's selling price). Astonishingly, the manager claimed that we weren't allowed to get another agent in until our contract with Haart had ended, despite Rachael literally quoting phrases of our contract to the contrary.

11) Several of the people who came to view our flat via Haart indicated that Haart had been really quite rubbish with them as well. One notable example: she asked Haart for details on another property in our road that they were marketing, and they gave her details of ours instead.

12) A guy from the office called Tom phoned Rachael and left a message to call him back. She did, and they said he was on the phone and would call her straight back. In spectacularly predictable fashion, he didn't. He didn't call back the next day either: Rachael phoned and they said he's in a meeting and will call her back. Someone else phoned Rachael back on his behalf and gave me some feedback and confirmed that that was indeed the feedback Tom had been going to give her. Then later, Tom phoned with the same information, apparently unaware his colleague had already told Rachael it.

13) It seems they weren't content with giving us no feedback at all, and so decided to give unfounded speculation disguised as feedback. They explicitly told us about one viewer "he wants to make an offer". Of course, there was no offer forthcoming.

14) We finally got to the end of our prolonged contract with Haart. (I.e., they didn't sell our flat within the 16 weeks we foolishly signed with them.) But we're not quite boycotting them, as there are some misguided people trying to sell nice houses with them. So we went to a viewing... and the agent wasn't there. He was 15 mins late. We phoned the office to chase (we were on a tight lunch-break), and they said "we have 15-20 appointments a day; if one person's late it has a knock-on effect." That suggests this is an expected occurrence, which means they ought to plan for it and schedule more time between appointments. What with this and the viewing on our property where the agent was 30 mins late, we suspect they are often late, and we also suspect that the *many* viewers who "didn't turn up" to our property did in fact turn up and gave up waiting for the agent.

15) They theoretically open on Sundays, but only have one member of staff in the office and she has to lock up if she goes to the toilet (which makes the place appear closed - there's no sign or anything). The second time I tried to go there on a Sunday, she came back and opened the door just as I was going to give up and leave, and so she was able to explain this to me; the first time I went she must have still been in the toilet because I did just give up and walk away.

16) Six weeks after our contract with them ended, they haven't got around to taking down their For Sale sign.

17) Feb 2008: We're trying to view a house they're advertising, and they didn't have us on their database so had to take down all my details again. (I could perhaps understand them deleting us after we stopped *selling* with them, but we know they didn't, because they still had us a few months ago when we viewed the place on Mere Way described in point 15 above.) They had no record of us at TheShrubbery, although they did have a - presumably much older - record of qqzm there. We provisionally arranged a viewing and they said they'd call straight back to confirm, but I'm still waiting.

18) Alex phoned them to try to confirm the provisionally-arranged viewing as well. They didn't phone him back either. We turned up anyway, but the agent didn't. We phoned the office, and they said they'd already sold the place. Would have been nice to tell us and/or return our calls.



Something else just happened, which might be Haart's incompetence or someone else's dishonesty, I can't tell. We got a "letter" (actually just a Haart compliment slip with things scrawled on it in biro) saying "Re: your home. Please call <name> on <number>." The number isn't Haart's usual one (it's an 0800 rather than their usual 01223, and it doesn't exist on Google) and the name isn't one I recognise. Also, the letter was addressed just to our house number and road - not our names, not even "the occupier". So I assume someone has seen the For Sale board which Haart haven't got around to removing yet, and sent this because of it. The question is whether it's a Haart employee we haven't dealt with yet, who didn't look up our address on their database (I know we're still on it even after the contract ended) to get our names, and who perhaps wants to know why there's a Haart sign outside a property Haart aren't marketing; or whether it's some sort of scammer who's seen the For Sale board and got hold of a Haart compliment slip (easily done, I assume). I phoned the number and it didn't even connect.
Update: Tried again, and it did connect. They answered the phone as Haart, and when I asked they said it was the head office rather than the Cambridge office, but the person whose name was on the slip was in a meeting and could call me back. I didn't want to leave my number, so I said I'd call again later.
I just got one of these compliment slips too - exactly the same pattern - though I haven't bothered calling. This is  to the flat I have just moved in to, for which the estate agent wasn't Haart. I assumed they'd seen that the 'Sold' sign had been up for ~3 months and thought they'd try and get in on the business. --B, who is having a housewarming+birthday party sometime soon, when he's found a date his girlfriend can make...


My colleague just told me about his recent experience of Haart's extreme rubbishness as letting agents. One of his housemates recently became unemployed. Because the rental contract is jointly and severally with all tenants, Haart aren't happy about this, and wanted a guarantor. But they had strict criteria for the guarantor, which they never made explicit. So the tenants suggested person after person, each of which Haart rejected as guarantors for a different reason, and this took long enough that the time ran out and Haart gave all the housemates notice of eviction :( --Rachael



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