CPS Homes Bewertungen 

Antwort von CPS Homes

2. Apr. 2024

Hi JJ,

We’re sorry that you’ve had a less than positive experience with us. To verify & learn more about your experience, we’ve reached out to you via Trustpilot’s private messaging platform.

Responding more broadly until we know more, we always suggest viewing in-person rather than renting a property based on a video. We do not place furniture in photos/videos “strategically”: doing so would just mean receiving complaints on move-in.

If we receive a complaint from somebody in a block of flats who cannot identify the cause for that complaint, we will approach all flats to make them aware of the matter.

All incoming occupants can raise any concerns they may have over the cleanliness of the property on arrival. Where they do so & it is a valid concern, the cleaners we use are more than happy to go back out & address these concerns. It’s rare that they must do so, but – like us – they’re only human, so mistakes can be made & they’re happy to go out & rectify them. We trust you raised this with us at the time.

We’re very reactive to all maintenance reports. Not reporting a leak, as you’ve suggested, is not advised. It’s worth bearing in mind that – in a block of flats especially – leaks can come from the flat(s) above. Sometimes occupants don’t realise that something is causing a leak, e.g. perished seals around a bath/shower tray letting water through, so we are reliant upon reports. These reports can (albeit rarely) come too late, meaning the flat below may suffer from the leak, but as we’ve said, we are very reactive to such complaints. As always, we must seek permission from the landlord to get the work done, as they will be the one paying the bill. Waiting for their approval can sometimes take longer than we would like. We are committed to minimising these delays & chasing up occupants’ requests. We want things to run as smoothly as possible for everyone living in the properties we manage.

We don’t consider our accounting system to be complicated. We ask occupants to pay their rent using a specific payment reference. Where they do, there is no issue. Where they don’t, we don’t want to mistakenly attribute payment to the wrong occupant – which could easily happen without the correct payment reference & similar/same names (we have thousands of occupants) – so we may request proof of payment. Once received, it’s easily sorted & we ask that the correct payment reference is used in future.

Both landlord & contract-holder have responsibilities in helping combat condensation. We ask contract-holders to confirm if the heating system is working properly & all parts of each radiator are hot to touch when turned on, whether trickle vents are fitted to the windows & if extractor fans working. If any of these answers are “no”, we will have a conversation with the landlord about making changes. On top of this, we issue contract-holders with detailed, written advice produced by Cardiff Council on how to reduce mould & condensation. In it, it says ““in 99.99% of cases, the cure for condensation & mould growth is heating & ventilating a property. This is why tenants must take responsibility for the way they live in their home”.

We ask you to bear in mind that every time a contractor is called out, they charge at least a call-out fee, plus further costs for their time & any materials used. This is true not only of the contractors of the CPS Homes uses, but of all contractors up & down the country. As such, £60 for a clean is not “extortionate”. This company is one of several local trades we have been using for over 20 years to carry out work in properties we manage, so we know & trust them. They price fairly & accurately for their time. Many letting agents opt to instruct national companies to manage their cleans, who typically charge more due to increased overheads & travel time, meaning a higher cost to tenants & landlords alike. As a company born-&-bred in Cardiff, we prefer to issue our work to local people.

The CPS Homes Team.

Antwort von CPS Homes

2. Apr. 2024

Hi Hussain,

Thank you for leaving a review.

You viewed a property on Churchill Way that was advertised at £1,200 per month exclusive of all bills. We have checked and double-checked this at our end. We’ve even confirmed it with the website you enquired through, AccommodationForStudents, who said: “I've just checked with our Dev Team and they have had a look at the archives and can confirm the property was listed without bills included.”

After you completed an application form and paid an agreed holding deposit of £275 (not £300 as claimed), you proceeded to dispute the previously advertised and agreed £1,200 figure and claimed it should be £1,120: a difference of £80 per month. This amount was never agreed by CPS Homes or the landlord, which we communicated to you.

You then requested to view an alternative property in Altolusso with us, but the landlord of that property accepted other occupants before you had a chance to view it. We then asked if you would like to proceed with the property on Churchill Way. We didn’t hear back from you and you failed to provide us with the information required to proceed with the let. As a result, we had to inform you that the deadline for information had passed and the landlord had decided to remarket the property to other occupants, as was his right.

It’s our opinion that you were aware of the £1,200 per month rent when paying the holding deposit (as per the advert), but you wished to renegotiate the rent to a more favourable figure after looking at other available properties online, as perhaps proven by your request to view an alternative property.

Kind regards,

The CPS Homes Team.

Antwort von CPS Homes

19. März 2024

Hi Luzia,

Whilst we don’t have an exact match for your name on our database, we have a partial match which is associated with a tenancy that ended last week, so we believe we’ve located the correct property.

When we conducted our check-out inspection, we found the property to have been left in a very poor state. Upon comparing the condition of the property ‘now’ to how it was when the tenancy started less than 3 years ago, we found there to be a stark difference between the two. When the tenancy first started, the property was in a good condition throughout.

We shared our photographic report with you and with the landlord. In it, we highlighted the differences in the condition between the start and the end. We noted anything that we believed to be wear & tear (the landlord’s responsibility), and anything over and beyond fair wear & tear (the outgoing occupants’ responsibility). The latter category included a great deal of cleaning being required, as well as the disposal of a huge number of items you had left behind.

Occupation contracts are between the contract-holder(s) and the landlord. Therefore, if there are ever any proposed deposit deductions to claim for at the end of the tenancy, it is the landlord who chooses to submit this claim. The landlord agreed with our report and instructed us to claim for the dilapidations noted. We would much prefer not have to make a claim from a deposit, however, we cannot turn a blind eye to the conditions we found during our check-out inspection.

As with any deposit claim, if a contract-holder feels a landlord's claim is not justified, it can be disputed. You are more than welcome to do this and provide your own evidence. If a mutual agreement cannot be reached, the deposit scheme that protects the deposit can appoint an unbiased, impartial adjudicator to consider all evidence and make a ruling. We're pleased to say that the vast majority of deposits CPS Homes returns are done so with mutual agreement between landlord and contract-holder, meaning only a small minority require independent adjudication.

The prooperty had no mould when you moved in. Mould is caused by condensation, which presents itself as dark-coloured spores and starts off as tiny water droplets. These droplets are created when excess moisture in the air comes into contact with a cold surface, e.g. windows, walls (especially exterior walls) and inside furniture. Condensation is commonly caused by low internal room temperatures and a lack of adequate ventilation. The problem can be exasperated when heating is not being used to warm the property, or when there are high moisture levels in the air, for example during showering or if drying damp clothes on radiators.

Both landlord and contract-holder have responsibilities in helping combat condensation. We ask contract-holders to confirm if the heating system is working properly and all parts of each radiator are hot to touch when turned on, whether trickle vents are fitted to the windows and if extractor fans working. If any of these answers are “no”, we will have a conversation with the landlord about making some changes. You never told us that any of this was a problem.

On top of this, we issue contract-holders with detailed, written advice – produced in conjunction with Cardiff Council – on how to reduce mould and condensation. This advice says “in 99.99% of cases, the cure for condensation and mould growth is heating and ventilating a property. This is why tenants must take responsibility for the way they live in their own home”.

Finally, we have no record of you being charged for a broken shower or a blockage. A deep clean of the bathroom (which included the leaving behind of approximately 20 empty toilet rolls) is included in the landlord’s deposit claim, however.

We trust this response accurately records events, but as mentioned, you are welcome to dispute the deposit claim and for the matter to be referred to an independent adjudicator.

The CPS Homes Team.

Antwort von CPS Homes

13. März 2024

Hi Taiye,

Thank you for leaving a review. We're sorry that your experience with CPS Homes has been a less than positive one and you ultimately haven't been able to secure a property.

We've had a look at the information available to us using the brief details supplied. We received 1 x e-mailed enquiry from you via Zoopla approximately 15 months ago. In this enquiry, you stated that you needed to move considerably earlier than the date the property was available from. Therefore, as your personal circumstances didn't align with the available date, it wasn't possible for you to proceed with your interest.

If you have had any subsequent dealings with us, e.g. over the telephone, please do let us know and we will look into matters. You can send information to feedback@cpshomes.co.uk. We’ve also reached out to you via Trustpilot’s private messaging platform.

Speaking more generally, it is worth bearing in mind that due to the current strong demand for rented accommodation in Cardiff, it is not unusual for us (and other letting agents) to receive 15-20 enquiries for an available property. Unfortunately, only one of these interested parties can proceed, so 14-19 are going to be left disappointed. Letting agents and landlords alike have standard referencing/vetting criteria that need to be met in order to proceed, so if you/any interested party cannot meet that criteria, you are likely to lose out to somebody who can. Equally, even if you can meet the criteria, you might be competing against one or more interested parties who also can, but as mentioned, the landlord can only choose one.

We wish you the best of luck in your ongoing search.

All the best,

The CPS Homes Team.

Antwort von CPS Homes

8. März 2024

Hi Joshua,

Thank you for leaving a review, and sorry your experience with CPS Homes was a less than positive one. We'd love to know who you spoke to, when, and what the conversation was regarding. We'd appreciate it if you could respond with details in the message we have sent you via Trustpilot's private messaging platform. That way, we can verify if a conversation took place, what the outcome of that conversation was, and take any necessary action.

Currently, we cannot find you on our database.

Many thanks,

The CPS Homes Team.

Antwort von CPS Homes

5. Feb. 2024

Hi Dominika,

We’re sorry your experience with CPS Homes hasn’t been positive.

When occupants report issues, we seek permission from the landlord to get the work done, as they’ll pay the bill. Some landlords give us the authority to automatically proceed with everything without needing to contact them, but others give us a maximum spend per job or want to be contacted for everything. We categorise reports as a repair or an improvement. A repair is something your landlord is required to do, such as fixing an appliance that came with the property or remedying a health & safety issue, whereas improvements are discretionary, i.e. even if it makes total sense to do it, your landlord doesn’t have to agree to it as long as it’s not a health, safety or hygiene problem. With repairs, the time between your initial report & completion of the job can vary due to various factors.

- Fridge & oven: 2 weeks after you moved in, you reported issues with both. When we conduct inspections, we perform visual checks. Time constraints mean that we cannot use each appliance & check they are fully-functioning, but if something is visually wrong, we endeavour to resolve it. If these particular appliances were issues for the last occupants, they should have been reported. Either the previous occupant didn’t tell us or they only became an issue 2 weeks into your tenancy. Whatever the case may be, on the 1st working day following your report, your landlord instructed an appliance company to call-out. They attended on the 4th working day following your report & reported back that, due to a system fault, the fridge should be replaced & the oven needed a couple of parts. They quoted for these & your landlord authorised them. On the 11th working day following your report, both issues were resolved. We don’t consider this to be an unreasonable response time, given that we needed to wait for an appliance specialist to become available to call-out, diagnose the issues, quote, order the replacement appliance/parts, wait for them to come in, then wait on the same engineer to become available again to install them.

- Leak from communal soil pipe: Your apartment is a leasehold property within a purpose-built block of many apartments. The issue stemmed from the communal soil pipe, which is the legal responsibility of the freeholder of the block, not the leaseholder (your landlord). To fix the issue is therefore outside of the landlord’s & CPS Homes’ remit. We explained that First Port – specialist block managers appointed by the freeholder – manage the block & are responsible for the repair. Unfortunately, neither the landlord nor CPS Homes can influence something that is not their legal responsibility, though we will always endeavour to pursue them & press them into action.

- Washing machine: Again, your landlord promptly authorised an appliance engineer to attend when you reported this problem. They attended on the 3rd working day following your report & advised it'd be a non-economical repair, so quoted for a new appliance. Your landlord authorised the new appliance. The engineer did experience a delay in receiving the appliance from their supplier due to stock availability, but it was still installed on the 14th working day following your report, which we don’t consider to be an unreasonable response time.

- General: We have always communicated your reports to your landlord. Where the responsibility lies with them, they've always authorised a repair or replacement within a satisfactory period of time. When a contract-holder reports something to us, we will always endeavour to have a contractor attend, even if it’s same-day in some cases, as we know most occupants would like the issue resolved ASAP. We’re sorry if you were given too short notice that a contractor was available to attend same-day. You're always welcome to advise that such short notice is inconvenient for you & they will liaise with you to arrange an alternative time.

Kind regards, CPS Homes.