The Deposit Protection Service is currently struggling with a backlog of work.
One agent we spoke to had contact last with the DPS on June 26 when he was told to expect a reply within five working days.
However, despite chasing up, there has been nothing further.
A spokesperson for the DPS yesterday told EYE: “We have recently experienced an increase in registrations for our custodial scheme, which has led to more calls and emails with tenants and landlords.
“We’ve brought in more contact centre agents to help deal with the increase, but we’re not currently responding to enquiries as quickly as we have ordinarily been able to.
“We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes, and aim to return normal service soon.”
And that is not the only problem.
1. Reconciliation – For those that like to reconcile, it is not easy, never was that great to collate the deposit value information against your office system, but now, woefully inadequate and very time consuming.
2. Security – Considering the value of deposits held by each agent and the information stored, their logon credentials are somewhat surprising basic, just email address and a password.
3. No online audit trail for the adjudication process – Email updates on disputes are non-existent; and they do not update the deposit info if say information has been received. This leaves one unsure when providing information within the required timeframe has been achieved and therefore creates a concern that they might award the tenant the deposit for failure to provide evidence. You have to ring them and they will tell you that a package has arrived, but still no system update.
4. Deposit transfer reference – Before, one had to simply arrange a bank transfer to the DPS using the agent ID as a reference, and the deposit would be automatically allocated; NOT NOW!, No, if you want the system to auto allocate, you now have to edit your bank narrative for each bank transfer. I have no idea what would happen if I forgot to edit the reference number, would it be allocated to the wrong tenant?
Way to go DPS, you have a happy customer in me!
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I don’t like their new website. As our Deposits are paid by Head Office, we used to print off a Cheque Submission Form to send to them with the information to send the money, but now you have to go through various different options to even find the form.
I really do not like the fact that they have got rid of the Repayment ID’s, I thought that was a brilliant extra security feature! Now, any 10 year old hacker can get in to the system and return all of the deposits to the Tenants, I don’t know if they would be able to put their own bank details in and siphon it to theirs or not!
We have been thinking about moving to TDS in all honesty… Their adjudication system appears more streamlined and easier to keep up to date with. The last one I had I kept having to call and sit on hold to find out what was happening!
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The DPS is not fit for purpose unfortunately and we will certainly be looking at alternatives n the coming months.
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When will the site have a simple reconciliation button. When I asked DPS were astonished that agents reconciled their deposits against software!! We do and will continue to do so at least once a month otherwise what control is there?
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I have to manually do it… Very annoying!
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Previously fine with straightforward cases for repayment.
Now, definitely NOT fit for purpose! Took 2.5mths to process the one and only dispute I’ve ever raised – and then they got the arithmetic wrong and paid the Tenant part of repayment they’d authorised to me. Never got any answers when calling – not allowed to speak to Case team dealing with Adjudication; could only speak to the Call Centre Agents who repeatedly said “You’ll just have to wait until we reply”.
Tenant thought I’d “submitted” my case 2.5mths AFTER the deadline date – due to DPS NOT passing submission on to them ’til then.
They treated my enquiry (about repaying me the wrong amount) as a “Complaint” to give them a further 4 weeks to play with!!
Now transferred to TDS.
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Hi Aurora12
Thank you for joining TDS, if we can provide any further assistance with the transition please don’t hesitate to contact us. We have a switching team in place who can assist with any transfers needed.
We look forward to having you as a member.
Patrick Kidney, Business Development Executive
TDS
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