And the winner of the Cruelest Landlord Award goes to ... Hectagon Investments Limited!

We were unfortunate enough to end up with Hectagon Investments as our landlord for the year we were going to spend in the UK. Everything went well until Covid came along, testing everyone's mettle and character. In March, I was asked by my university to please return to Cape Town for a while, but the extended lockdown, in the end, made it impossible for us to go back to London at all. We had to ask a friend to pack up our lives in London and vacate our Towerhouse flat, which was traumatic enough. This all meant that we were carrying the costs for accommodation in Cape Town, as well as paying for a flat in London we weren't using. Countless pleas to Hectagon Investments to please end our contract early or at least discount our monthly rent, fell on deaf ears. They offered us a 20% discount for 2 months, only to ask for the shortfall to be paid up in full the month after. With Covid affecting our lives and finances for many months, if not years, this was a senseless gesture. There are amazing Covid-year stories of sympathetic landlords accommodating and supporting their tenants. This is not one of them. During one of the most emotionally and financially stressful times in our lives, Hectagon Investments remained, in our experience, a faceless, unsympathetic, uncompromising, greedy entity. I have no idea what other businesses they are involved in and how they conduct themselves there, but I would suggest avoiding at all costs having them as landlord. PS For the record, during this time, our rental agents, Towerquay, were our intermediaries and we were generally happy with their services.