I went with Scott Fraser during a placement year and unfortunately found the service to be very disappointing throughout my time in Oxford, there seemed to be a consistent pattern of maintenance issues with the house being either undealt with and redirected back to us to deal with, or being carelessly approached.
A few examples of this: We had some panelling which had fully come off in one of the bathrooms shortly after moving in and as a professional "fix" literally just a layer of sellotape was added around it. Needless to say, it came off again shortly afterwards.
Secondly, I had an issue with an infestation and mould starting to spread in my room from behind the wardrobe. There were genuinely hundreds if not thousands of mites on my bedroom walls and rather than professionally dealing with the issue I was just advised with buying some mould spray instead. I couldn't properly deal with the root of this infestation on my own, so this lasted throughout Winter and Spring until they naturally went away in the Summer.
Also, there was a large mould problem on moving into our house particularly in the bathrooms, on reporting issues such as the mould, dampness and mushrooms growing out from under the bath! Again, no professional assistance was granted and I ended up breaking one of my room heaters (which I bought due to poor heating in the house) trying to dry out the bathroom and kill off the mushrooms.
The same types of responses were given to my housemates who had reported their own issues too.
I believe that maybe some of these issues would have been better dealt with if we'd kicked up more of a fuss throughout the year when we weren't happy with how we were being treated, but all of us being students and on full-time placements left us with very little time for doing this. Either way, good service shouldn't involve having to complain in the first place.
Finally, we ended up getting charged around £1000 off all of our deposits after thoroughly cleaning the house and certainly leaving particular rooms looking better than they did when moving in.... Read more
21 weeks ago