From a 7-year tenant experience: Stay away from Russells Lettings

Russells Lettings follows an unethical business model and chooses lack of transparency and abuse of power over continuing long-term customer relationship. - Very intrusive with two inspections a year for an unfurnished property with no white appliances. - Makes no difference if you have rented a property from them for 5 month or 5 years: They have no concept of customer loyalty. - They made me renew my tenancy every year, charged £70 for administration fees, and changed contract clauses which increased check-out fees! - Here is a piece of advice if you are currently renting from them: at the end of you tenancy, don't bother cleaning. They will charge you £160 regardless! Oh, and this does not include window cleaning, for that they will charge you an additional £40. Of course, this will be on top of £85 check-out fee, and don't forget 15% of all deductions (i.e. £160 contract clean, £40 window cleaning, etc) plus VAT as yet another administration fee! - If you didn't sign and agree to the £160 contract clean fee, it doesn't matter! They will try and enforce it by sending to you a contract page with your signature along with a page describing the contract clean fee, which you have never seen before nor does it have your initials or signature on it! - If you finally manage to convince them you have never agreed to a fixed charge for cleaning, they will then make up an invoice for £125 for cleaning labour, plus £15 for four missing light bulbs and £5 for one 9V battery. - If you still have some energy left, you will then argue with them and ask for a breakdown of this £125 cleaning invoice, and they will make up yet another invoice which contains 1h30min of labour worth £65(!!?!!), and lots of cleaning product, light bulbs and 9V battery that magically add up to £125.00 (and yes you have read it correctly, before it was £125 + £15 + £5, but in the breakdown item list, they moved those charges into the £125 to make it look a bit more ‘professional' – it is all made up as they go along!!!) I cannot discourage enough the use of Russells Letting services.

Unhappy Tenant - 17/10/2009 | report this review