Letting Agents Suck!!

When I signed my tenancy agreement with Leaders I was told that as my property was a managed property they would sort out the transfer of the utilities such as Council Tax, Water, Gas and Electricity.

Well earlier this week I received a Council Tax Bill from Gosport Council. Alarm bells started to ring when I noticed that it was addressed to Mr and Mrs Evans. Now I am pretty sure that I am not married to my brother so that clearly needed to be changed. It also stated that there was no Direct Debit set up for us. I ask myself what was the point of completing the form with my bank details if they aren't even going to bother passing them on.

I proceeded to ring the council and spoke to a very lovely lady who kindly changed me to Miss on their system and advised me that the third party (leaders) who supplied our details only gave them or Surname and the address of the property. Not at all helpful!!

So I completed a new DDM and mum has taken it down the town hall. Imagine my surprise when a letter arrived from Leaders last night advising me of who my utility companies are. This information on the whole would be quite useful if it wasn't for the fact it totally contradicted what I was told back at the beginning. Leaders had advised they recommend their tenants keep their Gas and Electricity with Southern Electric. Well my letter advised me that my electricity supplier is Eon and my gas supplier is Unknown.......helpful I don't think so.

They did however supply me with a number to ring to establish who the gas supplier is, I called them and was told this information is not stored on the National Grid as it is a private supplier, I can obtain this information from the Gas Meter. This means at the weekend I get to crawl around in the cupboard under the stairs to find out and then call them.

Back to the letter from Leaders, they did state that IF they have requested the services be changed to Southern Electric then we will receive a welcome pack in the next 6-8 weeks however IF they haven't then we will be billed from the current supplier in the usual way. This raises yet more questions:

1) How do I know what the usual way is? I've only just moved in
2) How do I know if they have actually requested the change?
3) Have they even bothered to set up a direct debit for my payments?

This means that yet more of my time is going to be taken up trying to answer these questions, so it looks like I will be taking a trip to leaders tomorrow to find out what the hell is going on.

The moral of the story is, if you ever rent a managed property through an agent and they offer to sort out the utilities for you, tell them politely not to bother it will be quicker to do it yourself!!!

xoxo