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.