We've had a terrible experience with Martin and Co. Would never recommend them to anyone, especially students.

I'm fuming!! I explained to them how eager I was to have the property. When i turned up the lady didn't have the right key, so I walked all the way there for nothing, lucky I hadn't traveled from London the same day just to view. She was just parked outside, I'm sure you're supposed to try the key and make sure the property is in full order.. I explained my situation to the lady and via email to Martin & Co and got no correspondence. I am so effing pissed that I didn't get the chance to view as I even offered to pay deposit there and then as I have no time to waste. i hope I NEVER have to use you lot again.

Incredibly disappointing. It all starts really well, everyone seems nice; and then you sign the contract. Suddenly, you're drowned in a sea of horrible paperwork, unreasonable "administration" (there was no administration at all) charges, maintenance calls that never go through. We had a sewer pipe burst in our garden and for almost 2 weeks we had to live and put up with the horrible smell and feces running through it. We had to constantly call and badger this agency before they decided to send someone to evaluate the situation. It took 2 full weeks for everything to be sorted, we ended up being accused of blowing the pipes because apparently we flushed a baby's nappy (none of us have children). The maintenance guy that fixed this left stains all over the hallway that we couldn't clean and in the end of the tenancy, they tried to charge us for the stains! And like this, there are countless other horror stories in a tenancy that lasted just a year! We all regret having chosen this house to live and we wouldn't wish this agency to our worst enemies. Steer clear!

Don't use this estate agency. They're rude, only think about their own profit and will do anything to take money off of you. They don't answer their maintenance calls, when they do they claim that it's your fault and you should pay for it (on matters that existed even before you moved in), they charged me for taking a mirror that I bought and when I complained they drowned me in paperwork to the point that I just gave up. This is a horrible agency, stay away from it. Find your house somewhere else, you can thank me later.

As a student at university in Canterbury, when my friends and I found a house under Martin & Co that was a godsend for any student accommodation we took it straight away. It was a good house with a large kitchen, 4 bedrooms and a garden. However from the beginning something felt odd. It took the letting agents around 2 months + to get the garden cut to the level they assured would be on check in, and although a lot is down to the upkeep of our landlord (who just so happened to live in Eastern Europe) the level of security was less than satisfactory, with the back gate leading on to a right of way left unlocked and in disrepair, unable to be locked from the inside. The level of cleanliness was less than what one would expect on check in, and if it weren't for our situation as students, any other would-be candidate for rent would be appalled by the standard. The fact that we had to move into a house of unsatisfactory levels of cleanliness would make one think that they cannot surely assume we would leave it to them in a better state than what we found it in? Oh how wrong we were. You can then imagine our severe frustration when Martin & Co then decided that a 'fair' sum of our £1200 deposit to be paid back to us was less than half. At roughly £564 it is safe to say that we must have done something ludicrously terrible to receive such a menial portion of our hefty deposit. Their justifications were the height level of the grass in the garden, being of 'medium to long' length which was 'unsatisfactory' to them, even after we strimmed the lawn with the only appliance we had available to us as students, which was a strimmer. There was a small burn in one of the bedrooms carpets', which as far as we're concerned is nothing more than marks generated from moving furniture. Scuffs on the sofa, which were already existent. The replacement of a tray in the fridge which we admit responsibility for. However the one thing we cannot get our heads around is the unsatisfactory level of cleanliness they base their entire argument upon. Parents of all the tenants joined in an effort to thoroughly clean the carpets and laminate flooring to make sure that this was not the case. We used top of the range carpet cleaning appliances, including a jet washer style cleaner. However the price of enlisting the help of a 'professional' cleaner to clean the house to their standard for the handover period to the next tenants was way above anything I have seen. The staff at Martin & Co were also dismissive and rude when we went to complain about the unfair treatment of our deposit, and we were eventually asked to leave after words got heated. We felt that as our tenancy and thus ties with the company had ended, their level of helpfulness and focus on customer satisfaction disappeared once they knew there was nothing we could do. Although there were certain members of the Martin & Co team whom I highly admire for their work ethic and general attitude to their clients I am strongly dissatisfied with the services Martin & Co as a whole provided, and would strongly urge any students not to go with this letting agents for your term-time accommodation! It is student exploitation at its finest, and they would like nothing more than to get their hands on as much of your money as they can.

This agency is abusive in its practices. We rented a house from them, a lovely house, and right off at the beginning, something felt odd. They asked for too much information, the process of signing the contract took weeks, they refused to accept papers from the University that are meant to be delivered digitally and instead accepted copies that had in big chunky letters saying they were not valid. But because the house was really nice, we decided to keep giving them the information and we finally managed to sign for the house. It started with the apparent state of the house and the real state of the house. As students, we didn't know what to look for during a check-in assessment so when they came to assess the house, to us everything looked fine and we signed the paper. As soon as we started living there, we noticed that things weren't quite as all right as they seemed at the beginning. The first time we flushed a toilet, we noticed that the pipes were clogged, some bits of furniture that seemed all right had been made to only look like they were all right and they either "fell" from their precarious place or downright refused to work (cabinet doors that had broken hinges). Along with all of this, they made a mistake delivering our keys and because we had signed the initial document saying we received the keys they spent the whole year trying to charge us for an additional key, even when their own photos showed that the key wasn't in the package they sent. The cherry on top was the check-out process. They were so incredibly thorough, it almost seemed like they already knew the problems with the house. They checked every nook and cranny and charged absolutely everything to us, lots of things that were already like that when we got the house. From a deposit of £2400, we were left with £500 to divide among us all and we're still fighting it. So far, they offered to return £35 because they realised they couldn't actually charge things that WERE on the check-in, but do yourself a favour and stay away from this company.

As a student at university in Canterbury, when my friends and I found a house under Martin & Co that was a godsend for any student accommodation we took it straight away. It was a good house with a large kitchen, 4 bedrooms and a garden. However from the beginning something felt odd. It took the letting agents around 2 months + to get the garden cut to the level they assured would be on check in, and although a lot is down to the upkeep of our landlord (who just so happened to live in Eastern Europe) the level of security was less than satisfactory, with the back gate leading on to a right of way left unlocked and in disrepair, unable to be locked from the inside. The level of cleanliness was less than what one would expect on check in, and if it weren't for our situation as students, any other would-be candidate for rent would be appalled by the standard. The fact that we had to move into a house of unsatisfactory levels of cleanliness would make one think that they cannot surely assume we would leave it to them in a better state than what we found it in? Oh how wrong we were. You can then imagine our severe frustration when Martin & Co then decided that a 'fair' sum of our £1200 deposit to be paid back to us was less than half. At roughly £564 it is safe to say that we must have done something ludicrously terrible to receive such a menial portion of our hefty deposit. Their justifications were the height level of the grass in the garden, being of 'medium to long' length which was 'unsatisfactory' to them, even after we strimmed the lawn with the only appliance we had available to us as students, which was a strimmer. There was a small burn in one of the bedrooms carpets', which as far as we're concerned is nothing more than marks generated from moving furniture. Scuffs on the sofa, which were already existent. The replacement of a tray in the fridge which we admit responsibility for. However the one thing we cannot get our heads around is the unsatisfactory level of cleanliness they base their entire argument upon. Parents of all the tenants joined in an effort to thoroughly clean the carpets and laminate flooring to make sure that this was not the case. We used top of the range carpet cleaning appliances, including a jet washer style cleaner. However the price of enlisting the help of a 'professional' cleaner to clean the house to their standard for the handover period to the next tenants was way above anything I have seen. The staff at Martin & Co were also dismissive and rude when we went to complain about the unfair treatment of our deposit, and we were eventually asked to leave after words got heated. We felt that as our tenancy and thus ties with the company had ended, their level of helpfulness and focus on customer satisfaction disappeared once they knew there was nothing we could do. Although there were certain members of the Martin & Co team whom I highly admire for their work ethic and general attitude to their clients I am strongly dissatisfied with the services Martin & Co as a whole provided, and would strongly urge any students not to go with this letting agents for your term-time accommodation! It is student exploitation at its finest, and they would like nothing more than to get their hands on as much of your money as they can.

This agency is abusive in its practices. We rented a house from them, a lovely house, and right off at the beginning, something felt odd. They asked for too much information, the process of signing the contract took weeks, they refused to accept papers from the University that are meant to be delivered digitally and instead accepted copies that had in big chunky letters saying they were not valid. But because the house was really nice, we decided to keep giving them the information and we finally managed to sign for the house. It started with the apparent state of the house and the real state of the house. As students, we didn't know what to look for during a check-in assessment so when they came to assess the house, to us everything looked fine and we signed the paper. As soon as we started living there, we noticed that things weren't quite as all right as they seemed at the beginning. The first time we flushed a toilet, we noticed that the pipes were clogged, some bits of furniture that seemed all right had been made to only look like they were all right and they either "fell" from their precarious place or downright refused to work (cabinet doors that had broken hinges). Along with all of this, they made a mistake delivering our keys and because we had signed the initial document saying we received the keys they spent the whole year trying to charge us for an additional key, even when their own photos showed that the key wasn't in the package they sent. The cherry on top was the check-out process. They were so incredibly thorough, it almost seemed like they already knew the problems with the house. They checked every nook and cranny and charged absolutely everything to us, lots of things that were already like that when we got the house. From a deposit of £2400, we were left with £500 to divide among us all and we're still fighting it. So far, they offered to return £35 because they realised they couldn't actually charge things that WERE on the check-in, but do yourself a favour and stay away from this company.