Rent A Property: Out there to milk you!

Rent A Property Estate Agent.

I have rented property for around 10 years and never in my life have a dealt with a agency as terrible is Rent A Property.

Firstly, when you apply for a property, they reply to your emails almost instantly and their service seems wonderful. That is until they have your rent and deposit.

When I moved to the property I had a few maintenance issues, it would take days to get a response, yet alone anyone to actually do the maintenance.

After paying one months full rent up front and a huge deposit I received a bill of over R500 after 5 days of living there.

I had no idea what this bill was about, so I emailed the agency to ask them and as usual it took days for them to reply (I kept receiving SMS's that I am in arrears). Finally they got back to me and advised that it was for operational costs (i.e: sewerage, dustbin ect).

I asked them when the amount had to be paid, now or at the end of the month when the rent is due.

To my surprise they rep**** to my email stating that "my payment arrangement that I made to pay the account at the end of the month has been accepted and they are charging me -+ R30 for the payment arrangement.

I immidealy paid the amount and informed them (all in writing) that I was merly asking as question and had made no such arrangement. The agency should have done their job in the first place of having the curtoisy as I was new tenant to explain what the bill was for.

And then and the end of the month I received my invoice and to my surprise the invoice included the -+R30 "payment arranagement" I supposly made and several bills for email charges! They were charging me for the emails sent up and down! shocking I know.

I eventually got them to reverse those costs.

Then...all the years that I rented I paid my rent via EFT. Where with Rent A Property, they take debit orders. So at the end of the month I paid all my bills including the rent. only to see a few days later that they took the debit order (so I paid rent twice by mistake) I immideatly called my bank and asked them to reverse the debit order because I had already paid the rent. Which they did for me at my cost.

I contacted the agency the same day to inform them of my mistake. They informed me that they will still pay bank costs because I reversed the debit order. (all this is in writing) . I told them that they should not incur bank costs as I PAID FOR THE TRANSACTION TO BE REVERSED. And of course at the end of the month they billed me R366 for the debit order reversal.

I asked them to send me proof from their bank that they apparently were charged this fee and I was told I was going to receive it. And of course I didn't receive anything. Once I sent them an email demanding the proof as I had a legal right to it because they have deducted that amount from my account they rep**** and said they do not keep such records. I persisted and finally received another reply that they did not incur bank charges, but those were THIER charges. For what? Who knows! My bank did the reversal and they did absolutely nothing!

The unit where I stayed was R6900 a month, but I got charged for so many things that my rent without electricity (pre-paid) came to R8000 a month! This unit was at Florida Lake - not a very nice or safe area.

I decided after all this trouble to give the agency notice ( I lived here for exactly 4 months). I wanted to type them a HUGE EMAIL telling them exactly what I thought of them, but because I was worried they would nail me with my deposit I rather just sent a formal email giving them 1 months notice as per my lease.

But regardless, they have nailed my on my deposit! I paid R8000.00 deposit and now they want to give me R1900 back! I stayed here for 4 months. This is absurd!

I acknowledge that I made neat holes to put WIFI into the unit and they want to charge me R3000 for this! IN addition the sink pedestal has a crack in it that they now want to charge me for it. They are charging for a brand new sink R1800. and the list goes on.

No photos of the pedestal of the sink was taken in the entry inspection *they took a lot of photos" and I didn't think to go look right at the bottom of the sink pedestal for a tiny crack to report the damage.

They are out there to nail people. No one in the complex stays long and the tenants that have been their for years also want to leave since they took over.

I feel sorry for the owner, because this agency is driving their property to the ground!!!!