Oaksestateagents Reviews

Do not use Oaks

Do not use Oaks You have been warned Having been a landlord for over 15 years and having used half a dozen estate agents in the hope of finding one that just isn t incredibly incompetent I can genuinely and categorically state that the search continues after using Oaks for the last year Virtually every member of staff I have had the displeasure of interacting with at Oaks are either incompetent and unprofessional or worse deliberately deceitful The terminology used is irrelevant when as a landlord you just want a professional service especially when you have used their hilariously named fully-managed service In relation to the last year I have been using them I honestly feel that I have actually done more work than them which is strange as I cannot fathom how each and every member of staff can actually make mistakes on every simple task they are asked to do My suspicion is that it may be a deliberate ploy as I do not know how they spend their time although once when I called I was told that they were playing football in the office this could possibly be the reason but surely even the fittest of them couldn t be playing throughout their whole opening hours Perhaps Sir Gareth could send some scouts down to Croydon to have a look I was hoping the new incoming manager would improve things Unfortunately this is not the case He is either covering for the incompetence of the staff he inherited or he is of the same calibre as the rest of his team It is difficult to say which but I believe he has had sufficient time to make up for previous layers of incompetence instead of which he continues to add more The point is if he can t remedy the ingrained lack of professionalism does it matter who is to blame Either way things have not improved over the previous manager who as it stands was even worse This may change though Do not use Oaks You have been warned I would like to suggest other estate agents but as mentioned at the beginning in my experience they are all as bad as each other What I can suggest is always haggle and reduce the rates that they want to charge not a particularly British thing to do but when you actually consider the work that they actually do and the work that you are forced to do to compensate for their failures you will realise you have still heavily over-paid them however much you manage to haggle it down to Also never use their own contractors build a list of trusted ones you can rely on and give this to the estate agents to use or you will be liable for extortionate charges obviously after the event so you have to fight for an explanation refund I am unsure whether Oaks do this but it is common knowledge that the contractors estate agents use charge larger fees due to having to pay them commission With this information you can be the judge of whether you would believe estate agents have the best interests of their paying clients at heart Oaks like other estate agents in my experience do their very best to hook landlords and tenants and when you have signed the contract it appears that they do not believe that they can be held accountable for their actions believe me when I say even the initial viewing period was not without hiccups so perhaps this is partly my fault however do remember the agents in charge of viewings are only salespeople Please be careful who you use I expect a response from Oaks trying to state that the issues were enter excuse and blame the landlord and I that have misrepresented them I have not I have literally dozens of emails which they have sent from different members of staff stating they would do something failing to do so then finding a reason why they haven t done it A favourite of mine is oh I was just going to call you It really is laughable I like to think that I am an honest guy who when he pays for a professional service just wants to receive it I had hoped the ironically named fully-managed service would mean I could be hands-off Unfortunately this hasn t been the case There is a slim and currently very doubtful possibility that the new manager will turn things around and if this is the case I will amend my review Please refrain from holding your breath I could continue this review spoiler it wouldn t get any better but I won t I ve made my point and the only reason I am writing this is to protect any landlords who are contemplating using Oaks Do not use Oaks You have been warned Just in case you missed either of the previous warnings Good luck