Disappointing behaviour from Randburg Just Property

A number of incidents have occurred dealing with the Randburg Just Property office that I would like to raise.

When I moved in I found a dirty property. There was urine on the toilet seat, urine on the floor, the shower had months of grime and there was still food residue in the kitchen cupboards. I complained to Kareen McGinn but she chose not to reply. I have the email I sent and also photos time stamped with the day that I moved in. In the vacate procedure from Just Property Randburg it states that "The property must be left in a clean and neat order .Failure to ensure the property is left clean for immediate occupation will result in a professional cleaning company being requested to clean the premises and the cost will be deducted from your deposit.". So why was it not cleaned before I moved in? The owner is paying for his property to be looked after.

I gave notice two-and-a-half months ago, I still have the email. I am vacating the property at the end of this month and I received an invoice for another month's rent. I enquired and asked them to correct the invoice. I received an email from the manager, Yolande Kamffer, saying that they did not receive an end of contract notice. She started the email with "Hi, you can pay it to us thank you.". That is terribly rude and that she did not check her facts. This was the last straw and the reason why I am writing this review.

According to my contract, if I should miss an appointment with a rental agent I will be fined R350. Why then, do rental agents not even let you know that they won't arrive for an appointment? This has happened on two occasions. Recently Kareen McGinn arranged for prospective tenants to view the property on the Monday. She simply did not arrive and did not let me know. The next day there was a knock on the door at about 18:00, it was Kareen. She arrived without phoning me. She has to arrange viewings with me. She cannot just come and go as she pleases. I sent an email to her telling her to be considerate and she chose not to reply. Afterwards I checked my phone and found an SMS that she had sent 17:39 "We are on our way to view the flat thanks". Four minutes before that she had sent an email stating "We will be there 6 pm to view".

Kareen came to the property a few days after I moved in for the inspection. Although I told her that the property had been dirty she wrote on the report that it was clean. That day I asked her to take many photos of things she considered to be irrelevant. She picked which photos to include in the report, ignoring what I had asked her to include. There is a tile in the kitchen which has a piece broken off - about the size of a ten cent coin. This was like that the day I moved in. This is not in the file. I asked Kareen for the previous tenant's inspection report so I could check whether she had recorded it in the previous tenant's report. She rep**** "Sorry that's not possible the file was archived.". Why does she not want to help? I told her to please check her sent items because the emailed report should still be there. It is simple, the file will have a "created date", if this is before I moved in then it is proof that it was like that before I had moved in. If she had archived all her emails and sent it somewhere for safekeeping it is not impossible, as she says, to retrieve it. I am a software developer and I know how this works. I will not give up. Now that she has refused, I will follow other avenues until I obtain the last two tenant's inspection reports. Next stop is the rental tribunal and then legal action.

Kareen advertised the property for R6300. I received my first month's invoice and the rental was just under R6800. I queried this and she said that I have to pay for sewage as well. Usually a tenant does not pay for sewage. The adverti*****t said electricity and water extra. Recently, when I was looking for a new property, every time I phoned to enquire and it stated "Electricity and water extra" I asked the rental agent if this meant I have to pay any levies like sewage. Each time they said that it was just the water used, not sewage. I feel this is dishonest advertising to not state that you would pay sewage - currently R480 extra. The property I am renting from November costs R6500 without water and electricity and the agents and owner do not want the effluent charge. Kareen is advertising it again for R6300, again stating water and electricity extra. Why not just advertise it for R6800?

I decided to move when I told Kareen that I would like to stay on and she told me that I would have to pay R750. She says this is common practice. I had a few questions for rental agents while looking for other accommodation, this was one of them. It seems it is not standard practice. Never in more than 20 years have I had to pay this and never in more than 20 years have I had to move into a dirty property.

The tenant before me broke the door lock because he had lost his key (those locks, where if you close the door without the key you are locked out). Kareen got a handyman to fix it with wood filler. It is misaligned and you cannot use the lock. There is no security gate and I would have liked to use this lock. It would be nice if the next tenant would be able to use it because when you view the property you think that it is not such a big issue that it does not have a security gate because it has this extra lock. When I discovered that it does not work I asked Kareen about it but she said it does not work anymore. No help offered. I have an email from Kareen stating that I am a good tenant and also an email from another employee at the Randburg branch stating the same. Why can't they be reasonable?