Having left our tenancy which was managed by Hastings International, I can confirm that I've never had such a bad experience wtih an Estate Agent. We are currently awaiting our deposit back which is now almost three months overdue. This was being handled by the office I've flagged in this review, the local team were ok but not great. We originally disputed the agency who asked us to maintain money for a deep clean. We had already had this carried out and when reviewing the property the inventor remarked to one of the tentants how clean it was. When contacting Hastings which took a very long time to get any response, they asked me to review the previous inventory against the one carried out at the end of tenancy and remark on it where the original matched up wtih the marks mentioned on the end of tenancy. So I spent some time doing there job for them which I had already paid higher than average fees for. During this time, I was also seeking a reference for a new place of tenancy, the estate agent charge £60 per person at end of tenancy for a reference to be released. Which to me devalues the reference entirely since I'm fairly confident the person releasing it didn't know who I was at all. So Hastings made £180 out of 3 people leaving that property. so 1 month after our tenancy we have it agreed not to pay any additional ammount after some considerable chasing. We have no emails back to state that the return of the deposit has been initiated, again admin that we have paid for not being done. We start the process ourselves and wait, and email and wait and then email some more for a month. We have no contact at all. I eventually call and I'm told that the people I've spoken to Mark (not the most polite person on emails but at least he got something done at one stage) and Denise (eternally absent but polite at least) aren't available but the gentleman on the phone confirms they have recieved the request and it will be attended. Two weeks later close to three months later we still haven't heard something. So we have now called the DPS who have been chasing them for two weeks, and have not recieved a single reply. I'd love to say that this is the only time that this estate agent has let us down but frankly every single step of our tenancy has been an entire farce in terms of management. If you see a property that you like do not put yourself through the absolute hell of dealing with them, the local branches will be nice people reassuring but the management and people dealing with contracts and deposits are entirely inept.