A sales and lettings agency has been expelled by The Property Ombudsman after a long-standing membership going back 17 years.
Bruten & Co, which displays the NAEA and ARLA logos on its site, is based in Wellington Terrace, Notting Hill Gate, London.
It also currently displays the Property Redress Scheme on its website, but yesterday TPO said that it would be suspended from that scheme too.
Its expulsion from TPO is for at least two years after the firm failed to comply with the lettings code and to pay an Ombudsman’s award.
The decision follows a complaint from prospective tenants who had applied to rent a property.
The complaint had two parts.
The first part, about the attempt to arrange a tenancy, consisted of three elements, two of which were upheld by ombudsman Christopher Hamer.
The second part, about handling of the prospective tenants’ complaint, was also upheld.
The prospective tenants found that the tenancy agreement they were sent included a significant extra term which was not in the offer form they had signed.
Bruten & Co allegedly refused either to amend the tenancy agreement or return the deposit and administration fees.
Bruten & Co also failed to clarify for the complainants how the utility bills for the property would be calculated.
The agent declined to deal with a complaint made by email, and when one was sent by post did not respond in a timely manner.
The ombudsman decided that these issues all involved breaches of the Code of Practice, and awarded the complainants a total of £768 in compensation. Bruten & Co has still not paid the award.
Hamer said: “In this case, I considered it to be fair in the circumstances that Bruten & Co pay the sum of £618 to the complainants to cover the holding deposit and administration fees that had not been returned to the complainants.
“In addition to this, I considered that a further award of compensation for the aggravation, distress and inconvenience caused as a result of the failings in Bruten & Co’s complaints handling was also merited. I therefore made a total award of £768.”
Bruten & Co had been members of TPO since January 1998. During the course of the disciplinary process Bruten & Co left TPO and joined a different redress scheme, which was said to be unaware of the disciplinary action against this agent.
Under an agreement between the redress schemes, it will be suspended from that scheme until it resolves issues over the complaint to TPO.
Hamer said: “Agents cannot avoid paying awards if they jump from one scheme to another. Under the guidance of the Department for Communities and Local Government the three approved redress schemes will not accept into membership any agent that does not meet its obligations to another scheme. Once Bruten & Co have met their financial obligations they will be free to join another scheme.
“After the two years have passed they will also be free to rejoin TPO, but they need to pay the award.”
There’s a lettings code? O_o
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Interesting as they now advertise they are members of the Property Redress Scheme & are still members of ARLA & NAEA. Shows what a joke membership is. Why is there no ‘black list’ of agents set up by all the ombudsman!
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I believe that many more agents will leave the TPO in due course, especially if they have had any dealings with them in the recent past……..my firm was fined £100 for the temerity to respond to a complainant partly in capital letters !!!!! Wow……….shock horror…..capital letters…..you couldn’t make it up…..complete joke I’m afraid…..hey ho !!
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With three options now available you can have much more meaningful conversations when signing up and see what their thoughts and stances are.
We left TPO as soon as we could. I feel a number of providers within the service industry rely far too heavily on their name and because they have been around for sometime.
As for a fine because you responded to a complaint in capital letters i find that absurd. That would be enough for me to decide to leave alone.
At the end of the day the public really do not care who you subscribe to. The do not know the difference and are not aware of any of them anyway.
Strangely the only people that police you are part of an address scheme are the portals. you need to evidence you subscribe to one of them before you are allowed to advertise, nobody else cares or checks! Mad!!!
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THE TPO ARE BIASED TO THE TENANTS – THEY TENANTS ONLY HAVE TO MAKE AN ACCUSATION WITH NO EVIDENCE BUT AGENTS have to prove they were innocent with supporting evidence.
IT Took the TPO 8 Months to resolve a case against us – 12 hours of work (recorded) by us to defend and 300 odd pages of documents – immense stress preparing and then waiting for the judgement. The claimants put in a few comments as to why they were unhappy (maliciously) little suporting evidence perhaps 20mins of their time but claiming many thousands of pounds.
We won so they got the right judgement finally. Thank God for that as we could not take it to court if we lost but the claimant could have of course. But there must be some sort of cost to a claimant to bring a claim with the TPO to prevent such malicious claims.
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Agree, Something is wrong with the system if people are able to make fictitious claims on a whim hoping for a payout. Resulting in a lets face it, in most cases small family run business putting hours into defending themselves and the cost of doing so.
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Absolutely seenitall……..before employees were made (as they are now) to have to pay for Employment Tribunals the Tribunals were inundated with malicious claims from employees….at least now they have to put their hands in their pockets before they start…….it should, as you rightly say, be the same with the Redress Schemes….why is it that the Agents FULLY fund this “stick that is used to beat us”……..unfortunately it will never change……”oh… we need to protect the poor innocent consumers from the nasty agents”…….yeah right !!
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Appreciate your comments Smileplease……thanks and yes I intend leaving the TPO VERY SOON (oops….sorry I used capital letters in my response…….£100 fine ??)
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Smileplease….here is the ACTUAL text from the TPO award to confirm the absurdity of it all…….
“The Complainant has also raised concerns over the content of the response provided to him, in that (the Agent) used a lot of capital letters throughout. On reading this response, it is my view that the use of capital letters was inappropriate, particularly given that this was the first response addressed to the Complainant in respect of his complaint. I am persuaded that this has caused the Complainant avoidable aggravation. I, therefore, support this complaint.”
I thought we lived in Great Britain……..NOT North Korea !!
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So they have been persuaded that it is a valid complaint because your response was in part in capitals?!
Wow.
Capitals are not a form of aggression they are there to highlight certain points.
It must be nice to sit behind a desk, playing God, Knowing even if you get it wrong nothing can be done about it. When the day is over you go home and can forget about your day.
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How does this sound
i valued a property on behalf of the high court. It was apart of a divorce. I was under clear instructions not to discuss the matter with either of the seperating parties.
And guess what, after we had visited the property, MR. Visited our offices looking to put pressure on us before we sent our report to the court , threatened female members of staff.
we told him we where very sorry but we couldn’t discuss anything and even ended up having to call the police on him.
He owned the house with his father, and he had worked as a estate agent once many years ago. So he decided to cause trouble through the ombudesman. Ombudsman accepted to listen to a compliant from them.
i advised the ombudesman that he wasn’t a customer, had not engaged our service and we where on directions from court.
Ahh they said,m but he is a consumer………It took days to prepare our justification.
wholleys
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From personal experience of over 4500 lettings agents and 21 years as a service supplier to the idustry to back up my judgement Bruten and Co are a good solid agent and therefore feel this case needs to be investigated more fully before third party commercial firms are allowed to become judge jury and executioner over the future of a firm based on a single incident.
If Trevor Mealham wants to get his teeth into a cartel situation there is an apparent and unjustified collusion between the redress schemes at play here.
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Just found an ‘interesting’ section of a blog on the web…
“Letting agents – now have to be members of a redress scheme so you can complain for free
This is a great scheme which has worked well in the estate agent industry. Basically all letting agents in England have to belong to a redress scheme, like The Property Ombudsman Scheme.
This means if a letting agent, in your view, over charges you as a tenant, then you can complain to the agent, if they do nothing or you aren’t happy, then you can complain, free of charge, to the redress scheme. If the agent is a member, they are acting illegally so you can report them and they will be dealt with which may mean being fined £5k or thrown out of the scheme, meaning they can’t operate.”
What does everyone make of a comment like that?
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