The 'B' Ark

"Oh yes," said the Captain, "... Hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants, you name them. We're going to colonize another planet."

And letting agents. You'll need letting agents, or where will people stay? Take the letting agents in the 'B' Ark!

What is it with letting agents? I mean, I'm sure it's no doddle getting customers, and tenants, and vetting them, and dealing with bad ones, and that stuff. And on the maintenance side you've got to have tradespeople on board you can call on when you need them, and that's like herding cats. You've got human relations challenges: selling yourself and your services to the people who can make your business viable and profitable: Winning Friends And Influencing People.

But it also requires organisation: keeping track of what needs doing, and when, and getting it done, and in my dealings with letting agents I've generally been able to count the number who could organise a piss-up in a brewery on ... well, I've rarely needed more than my thumbs. Some have been spectacularly bad: I've had an agent ask me to do a job, been round within hours and got a long, irate rant from the tenants about the weeks they've been waiting for any action, the number of times they've called the agents and that they've eventually had to take time off from work to confront the agents at their office. Another time an agent gave me all 3 sets of keys for a property on one keyring. (What if I'd lost them - would they have paid for a locksmith or charged it to the landlord? What's your guess?) One agent (actually the same one in all these cases) even managed to put me on their internal mailing list so for months I used to get emails telling me when their next meetings were!

So it's nice, and unusual enough to savour, to deal with agents who know how many beans makes five. One local firm, which started up a few years ago, is run by a husband-and-wife couple. He's the sort of cheery, likeable guy who's friendly with everyone: a classic people person; whilst his wife comes across quieter, also friendly, calm and highly organised. Whenever a Landlord's Gas Safety inspection was due, or some repairs required, she'd let me know in good time, jolly me along cordially if needs be, and generally make sure things got sorted out without drama.

"Was", "did": past tense.

Now, for some reason (maybe more office admin work than she could handle?) she's handed over the dealing-with-maintenance side to him. And a pig's ear he's making of it. 5 months ago I did a Landlord's Gas Safety at a property they manage for a friend of mine who's living abroad these days. I noticed a set of basin taps were falling apart and reported this to Mrs Letting Agent (who was still dealing with it back then). She got onto my friend the landlord and got the go-ahead to replace them. A few weeks later (I'd been busy) Mr Letting Agent told me he'd had them done. OK, no worries, relief as I was struggling to keep up with all the jobs I had on. Early December: new tenants moved in.

Early February I get a call from landlord friend, transatlantic, asking WTF is going on at his house because the tenants are onto him complaining about it. I don't know so I email to ask the letting agents. Day or so later I get a works order from Mr Letting Agent to replace the basin taps. Yes, the ones he told me he'd had done 2 months ago. Followed by another works order to check out the central heating system losing pressure. So I went in and found - and fixed - 2 leaks from radiators, which should have sorted out the pressure problem. Few days later I went back to change the taps, and one of the tenants told me the heating system was still losing pressure so I checked around a bit and realised the boiler's built-in expansion vessel had packed up. I part-emptied one radiator to give the system water somewhere to expand into and asked them to call me about any other problems. Which they didn't do so I assumed that had fixed it, until I heard from Mr L-A that it was still losing pressure. Went back and found another problem (pressure relief valve leaking) and fixed that. That should surely fix it! Went back a couple of weeks later to fix the expansion vessel problem permanently and thought that should be the end of it.

So I was a little surprised to come home a couple of days later to an angry email from Mr L-A complaining that he'd had his ear bent by one of the tenants - who had also sent him a lengthy email which he'd copied to me - complaining that the system was still losing pressure, and other issues. Followed by an email from my landlord friend copying Mr L-A's email to him. And I was quite gobsmacked to find Mr pissup-in-brewery Letting Agent accusing me of having taken 5 months to replace the bloody taps and 3 months to not sort out the pressure problem. Which given as this was happening barely one calendar month after he'd asked me to do the work just didn't add up, time-wise.

Now I don't know if Mr L-A really believed what he wrote but he obviously didn't bother to check any of his company's own records and emails before accusing me of incompetence and/or negligence. And he seems to be implying - to the point of actually believing himself - that I'm so incompetent that I wouldn't have copies of his firm's correspondence with me or any records of what I've done to check against his allegations.

I spent more time than I care to think about over that weekend and the following days writing emails and in long discussions on the phone with Mr Landlord (he called me: I think he's set up for cheap transatlantic phone calls to his family back here - it would have cost me about £100 on my call tariff to have made the calls from my end!). At the end of which I now have nothing but stress to show for it. Mr Letting Agent didn't even have the decency to acknowledge my emails, let alone apologise for the blatant bollocks he wrote about me.

From the accusations that I'd taken 3 months over the pressure-drop problem, and from what my Landlord friend told me about the tenants complaining to him since they moved in, I'd guess they had been reporting problems to the agents from day one but that it was only 2 months later that Mr L-A had stirred himself to do anything about it (and that only after I had emailed them to ask what was going on there!).

So from now on I'll avoid taking on any new work from these jokers. I'm sure they can find someone else: after all the South-East is just crawling with plumbers falling over each other for work.

And if you're looking for a letting agent let me tell you about those I know about ...

By the way, Dale Carnegie's classic "How To Win Friends And Influence People" is still worth a read today.
Especially if you're a shit-for-brains Letting Agent.