Extremely rude agent & poor service

Extremely poor service.

We signed a one year contract with them for a rental. We cancelled our contract after 10 months (we gave more than 20 business days notice) - on the 1st of March. Our contract stipulates a cancellation fee of R1000.00 - it is a reasonable amount and we have no issues with the amount being deducted from our deposit. We had no feedback from the agent when we gave notice, she first communicated with us the 25th of March after I received an invoice for April after I rep**** I will not be paying as we are moving out (I deemed it acceptable of moving out as she didn't respond to my notice). The agent hasn't advertised the unit after we moved out.

They haven't paid back our deposit yet even after signing a deposit refund letter that they sent me, after we had to send them a small claims court letter of demand. They didn't inform me at all how long it will take for them to refund our deposit - when I followed up with them I was answered extremely rudely that "IT IS WITH FINANCE" and I was blocked by the agent.

Before this when I would ask the agent when we can expect our deposit to be paid back the responses where either she hasn't received confirmation from the owner yet or simply because there isn't new tenants for the unit yet. We were being kept in the dark the whole time, when we contacted the owner she said the contract is between us and the agent and the agent says she's waiting for feedback from the owner - neither of them willing to assist us in paying back our deposit.

It has been 4 months since we moved out - still no refund of our deposit.

We had to ask & follow up numerous times because the agent isn't very assisting and helpful in this regard.