The staff at Renaissance Property Management are not very professional; each member tells us something different to the others and has no idea what his/her colleagues have said or done, none of the staff respond to communications promptly (mostly they don't respond at all!), they are unfriendly and inefficient and sometimes downright rude. Verbal agreements are rarely honoured, and empty promises are made that cannot be fulfilled. Some business days there are no staff at the office at all, and no calls are answered.
During our year renting a Renaissance property we have had the following issues with the agency:
- The toilet was blocked with a large piece of ceramic from the bathroom installation prior to our tenancy. It took us five phone calls and almost a week before the agency finally sent someone to fix it, during which time we were forced to use the bathroom facilities of a neighbour.
- The carpet was extremely old and stained when we moved in, but we decided we would just shampoo it ourselves rather than reject the property. When Renaissance inspected the property after we cleaned it, they denied the original state of the carpet and accused us of ruining it. They have since billed us for a ridiculous amount of money.
- We discovered that the health and safety standards were not being met. When we moved in, the only smoke alarm in the property was old and broken, which we were originally unaware of. If there had been a fire during that time we would have had no warning. There were no extractor fans in either the kitchen or the bathroom, and the non-double-glazed windows were growing black mould around the frames. The outer roof was broken and a large sheet of asbestos was hanging precariously from it, heavy enough to have killed someone if it had fallen.
- We have recently ended our tenancy with Renaissance, and the agency are refusing to return our deposit, on illegal and untruthful grounds. Also, we had agreed with them previously that if we left the property early we would receive a partial rent refund. They are now denying that they said any such thing. When we wrote to them with valid reasons why we are entitled to our deposit and rent refund, they replied with very offensive emails, in which they lied, denied the verbal agreements made, and said that they were keeping our money and two of our household appliances.
- When we accused Neil Watson (Manager) of lying and denying things, he told us that it was our word against his and that no one would believe us if we took action.
