Don’t sign, pay or believe Whitegates until you see that everything promised is provided. Since moving to Huddersfield in 2016 I am shocked at the morality of estate agents and the tricks they imply against students and professionals. None of the staff deserve to be associated as ‘professionals’ and should be ashamed at themselves for providing such a disgraceful service. Whitegates manage a lot of the properties yet do not know the first thing about providing a service let along a quality one, it is shocking that landlords even use them and trust them to maintain their properties. The incompetence is staggering and the staff lack the basic administration, customer service and business skills; enough to make Entry Level 3 holders look like Master Students. The Manager completed the same business management degree I am doing and as previous manager I would expect him to show more passion for his role and lead by example, to take care of the residents that rely on estate agents to do their job. Instead of advertising their awards, which is a joke to comprehend that Huddersfield are the winners in the company, they should instead be focusing on advertising the right information and invest in a better data management system. Just take a look at the reviews and you will see that every tenant, every customer complaint and issue is ‘not on their system’. Before Whitegates reply back to this review and say I’m not on their outdated and poorly maintained system, I will state that I lived in Flyboat Flats from April to September 2017 which was a disgrace. No doubt when I finish my Placement Year that my property will be let by Whitegates and as a customer I demand absolute clarity and no contract will be written; no money paid until the property is to the standard they promise. Whitegates also need to clean their property profiles; just a look on Rightmove and you can see the discord between their locations, prices and descriptions. Be careful, the pictures of a property will look nothing like what you see, yet they maintain the farce that the pictures are recent. Seeing as a few colleagues live in Whitegate ‘managed’ properties, I see first-hand what 2018 Whitegates are capable of - Refurbished means; a broken fence is an open garden; spider infested bathroom is a nice view of wildlife; and restricted wifi is access to the fastest broadband available ‘at the property’. Whitegates business model is to take as long as possible to fix a problem, to buy the worse appliances possible, deny any and all faults to a property, and charge ridiculous cleaning charges for one thing when the tenant left the property in a better condition than was let out. Clarity, service and speed is not the Whitegates way; neglect, ignore and lie is. It’s time for Whitegates to get their act together and manage their properties properly. The tenants of Huddersfield have endured enough and deserve to be treated with respect. My sincere advice to Whitegates Stop lying, own up to your mistakes. The best thing to change your image is acknowledgment and to invest in delivering actual service. Manage your data in a standardised fashion; make it mandatory for every employee to name files in YYYYMMDD so information is recorded and found easily. When tenants have issues, follow through with them. You are being paid for a service, it is your duty to provide it and when your best is not enough, invest in employee training. Make a database of all your managed properties with all the issues logged in. Inform the landlords of issues if it is their responsibility to sort out and keep them honest and to a schedule. The tenants are paying fees, waiting for months to have a basic service met and request answered in good faith. If you, Whitegates, cannot fulfil your duty then it is in the public’s best interest to know where to find the right information to sue you. You have misrepresented information, failed to carry out property inspections, provided false statements of facts and induced tenants into a contract that you breached. Be Better