Had the worst experience with Lawson S Stone when we moved out of our rental property.
We gave our notice to move and almost immediately we had them ringing to trying to do viewings with less than 24 hours notice, a couple of times they tried to give us an hour’s notice which is just unacceptable.
Then we were informed we’d have to pay a £180 check out fee, despite having it in writing that we were not liable for the check-out fee as we had paid a check-in fee upon moving in. That took weeks to resolve, lots of chasing up and calls to Lydia who never seemed to be in the office. Finally we were told that we didn’t owe £180.
Upon moving out we cleaned the property to an excellent standard which was even better than when we moved in. Luckily we had pictures to prove this.
On move out day, met with the Inventory Clerk at the agreed time who asked me to hand over the keys and said that the landlord would be there another hour after the time agreed to inspect the property with her. I had to be at work so was not able to wait around for an hour and I regret that now massively. We were told that we could expect the check-out report in around 48 hours.
48 hours passed and the inventory report never materialised. I chased this up with Lydia several times and was told it was being processed. About 10 days later still no sign of it or the deposit and the new tenants had moved in. When I then queried this again I was told that the new tenants were extremely unhappy with the state that we had left the property in and that a fee of around £250 + VAT would be deducted by from our deposit for cleaning.
Given the lengths we’d gone to return the flat to an excellent standard, I queried what the new tenants were unhappy with and also what I felt to be an extremely high quote to clean a one bed flat that had already been deep cleaned upon vacating, Lydia became rude and told me that the quote reflected the cheapest one from many they had received and sent me the invoice as proof, apparently, that the quote was legitimate.
This all seemed kind of fishy and as no other quotes had been sent over to me for comparison, I decided to double check the number of the so-called ‘independent cleaning quote’. Although the name of the cleaning company and the address was different, the telephone number on the invoice matched that of the inventory clerk - leading me to understand that this wasn’t an independent quote at all and just another dishonest scheme they have going to get more money out of people.
I then proceeded to get in touch with the new tenants to find out what they were unhappy with and explained the issues we were having with Lawson S Stone. They informed me what they were unhappy with were mess and other issues which they understood related to building works that were done upon us vacating.
At the same time i also found out that Lawson S Stone had changed deposit protection schemes midway through our tenancy and had failed to re-protect our deposit.
When presented with all of this information and also the details of our solicitor who would be in touch should they decide to proceed with this nonsense any further, they started the process of releasing the deposit in full. Although even this took around 3 weeks to actually reach us due to their very lengthy payment cycles.
They will literally try anything to keep hold of your money, don't let them get away with anything.
H B, 09 Mar 2021