Aston Fox Letting Agents - Dreadful Service

Aston Fox is a letting agents, based at 196 High Street North, in East Ham, London. E6 2JA. It is run by shadow director, Mr. Philip Chandler, who is a disqualified director currently owing £325,000 to landlords in rent arrears. You can read more about him in this Government News Network report.

For those who may not know, letting agents find tenants for rental properties; they manage rent collection and may provide other services. Letting agents usually negotiate contracts to manage rented property for a period - often two years. Their fee for managing the property for this period is often taken out of the tenants first few rent payments.

Let's Fix Britain provides a Complaints Service. For a small fee we write a complaint letter and we did this for our client in. She had engaged Aston Fox to manage her property - they found a tenant. For a while the tenant's rent was absorbed by Aston Fox to pay the two year letting fee of £2,444. However, when that fee was paid Aston Fox passed on only £156. Since that first and only cheque, four months have passed and Aston Fox have not paid our client a penny.

As a follow-on service, we offered to try to recover the outstanding money from Aston Fox for her, on a no-win, no-fee basis.

One of the tactics we use is to document and publicise the conduct of companies who mistreat their customers, and that is what this article seeks to do. It is, of course, illegal to damage the reputation of a company or individual by publicising unsubstantiated claims or lies - and that is as it should be. But it is not illegal to tell the ugly truth about a company who is mistreating a customer. That is also - as it should be.

So here, we limit our articles to undisputable facts. We also offer complaint subjects - in this case Aston Fox - the opportunity to place their own un-edited comments here.

Aston Fox are not members of any of these professional regulating bodies:
RICS - Royal Institution of Charters Surveyors
NAEA - National Association of Estate Agents
OEAS - Ombudsman for Estate Agents Scheme
ARLA - Association of Residential Letting Agents

- This means that you cannot take any complaint you may have about Aston Fox to any of these organisations.
To date, Aston Fox has taken £2,666 from the tenant which should have been passed to our client - but was not. At the time of writing, money has been left unpaid for four months, causing our client very significant financial problems.
Our client tried to resolve this issue with Aston Fox on numerous occasions.
Her contact within Aston Fox - Stephanie - was unavailable to deal with our client on at least eight occasions. by telephone, and she did not return our client's calls. On one occasion Stephanie was unavailable to see our client when she visited Aston Fox in person.
In April, Stephanie assured our client that a cheque would be issued. But it was not.
In May, we took on the problem for our client. We wrote to Aston Fox asking them to respond with an explanation of the delays and a commitment by June 9th. They did not.
Like our client, I also found great difficulties in speaking to Stephanie who was very often "not in yet", "out to lunch", "on the phone", "in a meeting" or otherwise indisposed. ON one occasion she was dealing with a bomb scare. My requests for her to call me were usually ignored.
I did eventually speak to Stephanie who said that the problems were caused by mal-administration of standing orders. Can this kind of problem really persist over 4 months?
I set another deadline for Aston Fox to issue a cheque for the outstanding money on 29th June, informing us of the cheque's details. Aston Fox did not respond to this - nor did they meet the deadline.
In my earlier call, Stephanie assured me that a cheque for the full amount outstanding would be issued on July 3rd. It was not.
When I wrote to Aston Fox outlining our intentions in recovering our client's money, Aston Fox referred us to their solicitor - W.H. Matthews & Co., or 109 Old Street, London EC1 9JR.

Bottom line? Aston Fox have retained our client's rent money - about £3,000 - without permission nor any good reason which has caused our client significant problems. Aston Fox have been evasive and difficult to deal with. They have made promises then broken them. As at this writing - four months since the problem arose - they show no signs of returning our client's money.

If you would like to express your opinion of Aston Fox's conduct to them, please email them at stephanie@astonfox.co.uk or phone them on their Low-Call number: 0845 223 8220.

PLEASE NOTE:

Aston Fox have been notified of this article.

On If Aston Fox wish to express their views
I will place them here, un-edited.

From conversation with Philip Chandler I would like to point out the following on his behalf:

It's important to recognise that we usually see only the cases that go wrong. It may (or may not) be that these form a tiny minority of the client relationships maintained by Aston Fox.

Aston Fox tell us that they receive many letters and gifts from extremely satisfied customers. I have asked them to place these online, and I will be very happy to provide a link to them here.

It is also important to take care to ensure that you have a valid case before proceeding with a complaint. Ason Fox tell me that many clients simply don't read their contract or terms & conditions before complaining. So please do so, and be sure that Aston Fox is in breach before you take action.

UPDATE: December 2007
We received a letter from Aston Fox's Solicitors, WH Matthews & Co, which we are happy to publish here:

Dear Sir

Re: Aston Fox

As you may be aware, we act for Aston Fox and we note that in email correspondence you have invited my clients to express an opinion with regard to the information contained on your website, and that you would publish the letter unedited and our client is taking up this offer by way of this letter.

Our client has a well established firm in the East Ham area, having operated there for many years and has built up a reputation for being honest, reliable and hard-working which has enabled the company to expand.

Our client was extremely concerned that the Landlord you referred to at the beginning of your website received a service below one you can normally expect from a professional client such as ours and he fully accepts the criticism received. However, your website fails to mention the fact that your client has now been fully reimbursed and would you please therefore take steps to correct this accordingly.

With regards to the complaint made by another tenant in April 2007, the information contained therein is incorrect. The Landlord was always paid on time if not earlier than in accordance with the terms and conditions he signed. The basis of his complaint is therefore wrong.

With regard to Mr H, unfortunately once again the information you have been given is incorrect and we confirm that all monies have been accounted for to your client and we enclose a copy of the email sent to him confirming this fact

Our clients have dealt with many successful matters, and we ourselves have seen a whole file of compliments sent to our clients following conclusions of same.

It is therefore totally wrong to paint a picture that our clients are doing something wrong when he runs a very professional service. One genuine complaint out of numerous satisfied customers is not a basis for the tone of your site.

We trust this letter is published and edited on to the site so that people can get a fair balanced view of the realities of the situation.

Yours faithfully

BARRY LESLER

LFB NOTE REGARDING THIS LETTER:

Our clients fundamentally disagree with Aston Fox, and on every occasion we have represented a client, Aston Fox have finally relented and paid up what they owe.

Aston Fox East Ham, London Letting Agents

Aston Fox
East Ham, London
Letting Agents