Thanks for the feedback. As you will appreciate, it would be useful to know if Sterling were contracted by the landlord to fully manage the property - you do not state that in your email. While I appreciate that sometimes it can be frustrating for you, the tenant, it can also be very frustrating for us, the agent, when we want to deliver a service that we simply cannot do since the landlord has not contracted us to fully manage the situation. Generally, we try to fix any problems involving hot water and central heating within 48 hours and can act as an 'agent of necessity' if we cannot get hold of the landlord and we are not fully managing the property. However, we have to make all reasonable efforts to contact the landlord and give them a chance to rectify the issue before we can go ahead instructing contractors to fix problems that are reported to us, I am sure all clients can appreciate that we cannot go off spending landlords money without their authority, which on properties that are not fully managed, we do not have. I am sure that anyone else reading this review would also consider having the problem fixed within 48 hours fairly good (however I am open to anyone elses experiences) especially in the winter months where there was no doubt a back log of boliers etc needing fixing. While on one hand you critisice one member of staff for appearing 'short' you then criticise another member of staff for trying to be helpful by making a sugggestion to ensure all obvious problems have been looked at! In your review you state your mother was told to call back? This would be a first since we always call our tenants once we have an update, what would be the point in your mother calling back if we had no update for her - ie when the contractor was able to fix the boiler? Equally we always give the option for the contractor to liaise direct with the tenant in these instances to ensure a speedy resolution.We are pleased that once the plumber attended he called us since he may have needed to take instructions on costly repairs and didnt want to go ahead and spend the landlords money without consent? You are the first person to have made an issue of the renewal process. 2 months before the end of your fixed term we write to you to understand your intentions, since if you are vacating at the end of your fixed term we need to commence marketing to secure a new tenant, presumably if the property was not remarketed you must have communicated with lettings somehow that you were renewing or we would have secured new tenants? As with all review sites, there is never enough 'meat on the bones' and we rarely ever get any complaints made to our company - for anyone reading this review, I think more information is required and if we can share feedback that improves our service experience for any future tenants it would be invaluable. If you would like to discuss this in more depth it would be greatly appreciated, please email me on benbird@sterlinghomes.co.uk

Hi I am just an observer and came across this conversation between yourself and the tenant. I noticed that what the tenant has complained about - her mother was told to call back! She's making a point of telling you that this was obviously not a good service provided by your staff but in your reply your saying what would be the point in her calling back? Well that is surely something you should know. If your staff have told her to call back for an update then that is them at fault however you almost make it out to be the tenants fault for stating this. I think you should maybe take on board some of your negative feedback and own up to wrong doings instead of worming your way out by basically arguing with the tenant. Negative feedback is sometimes positive. At least you can find out where your going wrong and sort but you seem to be very much in denial.

From an out looker looking in. I have rented over 4 properties through different agents (mostly on the south coast) and from my experience if this is not a fully managed service by the agent - the norm is that the tenant should be liasing directly with the landlord for any maintenance issues as I have done in the past. It is not the agents responsibilty to deal with this. If anything, it sounds like the agent has gone above and beyond ! ....

I think what people seem to be weirdly over looking is the fact that this agent has been rude to the tenants mother! Odd that another observer can't see this. Makes you wonder doesn't it if the agent themselves has made a comment. If an elderly person is expected to deal with a broken down boiler themselves then the matter is actually pretty serious. I also think the person who left the review has been quite clear that her mother was not looked after well in the slightest - is that not obvious?? If you think your done a good job here as an agent then I feel extremely sorry for anyone who has to deal with you. Bloody hell!

''above and beyond' jeeeeeshh! You must have low standards or don't mind being badly spoken to. Actually people my dad owns an estate agent in the Chilterns - very succesful - and I just have to comment on this, an administrator in a lettings office is NOT in any position unless fully qualified and present at the issue to even begin to diagnose the problem themselves. What on earth! This is not a professional service and I'm sorry but if you can't acknowledge 1 a rude member of staff and 2 another member of staff who is possibly illegally giving your tenants false hope or false information then you need to do something about that. If that is true what the reviewer has written then I'd be worried, it could be dangerous for an elderly women to be lead to think she needs to sort the problem herself! Sorry but this just makes my bloody boil! I seriously hope these people are no longer tenants of yours. Being fully managed or not does not come into this because there are very two clear points made here that need to be addressed and it would have not made a blind bit of difference as to what sort of managment this came under.

I have now had the chance to review this and have tried to identify when this occurred in order to allow me to review the conversations that occurred and address the highlighted issues; we recognise that there is always room for improvement in any communication and welcome constructive feedback to help us improve when and where this is rewuired, unfortunately I cannot identify the property/tenancy referred to in this comment to allow me to address the specifics in either case. I believe the first of the two reported problems occurred during the exceptionally cold spell we experienced earlier in the year; a commonly reported problem during this period was condensing boilers with a frozen condensate pipe on the exterior of the house, this was occurring 5 or 6 times a day - all tenants who had a condensing boiler (checked by us by referral to the Gas Safety Certificate) were advised, following advice from two of out Gas-Safe Plumbers, that they may be able to resolve the issue by locating this pipe on the wall outside the boiler and - if it was found to be frozen - defrosting it with a hairdyer or some hot water thus allowing the condensate to vent from the boiler whcih should then restart automatically with no attendance from a plumber; thus getting the tenant a working heating/hot water system almost immediately rather than having to wait for the attendance of a plumber - we would certainly never ask a tenant to start doing their own maintenance on the working components of any appliance! In each situation we requested that tenants call back to advise if they had been able to resolve the situation, I acknowledge however that it would have been appropriate in these circumstances to follow up with each tenant just to be doubly sure instead of relying on them calling back to say the advice given had not resolved the situation. As an additional point of reference in this case, Whenever a boiler breaks down we offer our tenants the use of electric convector heaters which our staff will deliver; we hold a stock of these heaters at each branch as a backup for such situations to ensure tenants are not left without heat while the issue with the boiler is resolved. With regard to the comments about renewal, we have a well defined process for writing to tenants and handling their repsonse to a renewal request, I can only apologise if the process we have in place broke down on this occasion, unfortunately without an address/further details I cannot comment further.